Groves Green IT

Carbon, EE, Good Planning: Holding steady, moving forward, or sliding backwards?

 

I was re-reading old magazines and this DataCenter Dynamics Focus magazine from August/September 2009 caught my attention.

Mike Manos while he was at Digital Realty Trust, said in an interviw with James staten of Forrester Research, "Most people in IT and facilities have no idea what planning is. The day most enterprises realise they need more capacity is near, or actually on, the day they run out of capacity.  Integration of IT and facilities and understanding what planning looks like is key to the future of our industry. The burden moves to the software industry and the software industry is relatively ignorant of the data center. Why aren't we putting more pressure on the software industry.  I'm putting $50m into a facility so that I can run a $1m piece of software."

Has that changed in the last two years?

James Staten finished the panel interview by asking his guests for one simple action to drive efficiency. John Haas of Intel said "sub meter!", Mike Manos said "Plug the holes in your floor." Bill Mazzetti of Rosendin Electric said "airflow analysis", and Tim Furlong of Facebook said, "cooling - do the basic things."

Those bits of wisdom still sound useful.

In the June 2009 issue of the same magazine, an article about Carbon Tax begins with this paragraph about the UK:

"How quickly is the data center industry adapting to the looming carbon credit scheme which will impact businesses in early 2010? How will the scheme affect data center serice contracts? Will it drive data center investment overseas to countries with less stringent tax regimes?"  Further down on the page, the article author asks, "What this shows is that you can only know what you know--and right now, no one knows much apart from the fact that carbon tax is coming." (I can't see where the author is named, so consider it an editorial group-write from DataCenterDynamics.

I don't know the answer and it is a question I will be asking my colleagues next week at the Broad Group Data Centre 2011 conference in Nice, France. I didn't see a single presentation listed with the words carbon credits in the title on the agenda. What does that signify? It is obviously not top of mind...

Then I went way back to the "Design Recommendations for the High Performance Data Centers report of the Integrated Design Charrette hosted by the Rocky Mountain Institute  on 2-5 February 2003. EIGHT YEARS AGO. On page 11 of the report you can read this: "The result of this charrette was a data center design concept that reduces energy demand by an order of magnitude (89%) compared to today's standard designs, while providing equivalent computing power and greater reliability." 

What percentage of our data centers in North America or globally have reduced energy demand by 89% since 2003?

It goes on to say "The charrette addressed several important issues:

1- Unnecessarily high energy bills (yes we've done that)

2- Unnecessarily high capital cost (yes we are doing that)

3- Grid Dependence (hardly: the charrete recommended utility grid as backup to onsite ultra-reliable power generation)

4- Utility distribution charges and delays: (still in its infancey based on my research earlier this spring)

As we know the world as changed significantly since 2003 and our energy resources are more precarious today than then.  We need another forward thinking RMI-convened Charrette with timetables attached. Can we afford not to?

Have a GREEN DAY!

 

 

 

Talking with Dr. Bob Sullivan about the Kyoto Cooling fan

I got to know Dr. Robert F Sullivan through several Uptime Institute events over the years and he was tremendously helpful to me two years ago when I was doing research on attitudes toward water conservation among data center operators.  I caught up with him recently and had the opportunity to talk about one of his favorite topics: the Kyoto fan. Dr Bob is best known for his Cold Aisle/Hot Aisle innovations.

Dr. Bob, tell my readers what the Kyoto fan is and why it is both a traditional and innovative product.  

Kyoto Cooling (named after the Kyoto Accord) is an idea created by four young engineers in The Netherlands.  The basic concept has been used in building and industrial air conditioning installations for over 60 years.  In building AC systems a heatwheel is used to precool hot air in summer and warm cold air in winter.  The key component of the system is an aluminum honeycomb wheel that absorbs heat in one airflow stream and dissipates it in another.

In the traditional configuration the system is set up to draw fresh air into the building, precondition the air to lighten the load on the HVAC system and then exhaust the air after it has passed through the building.

In a data center, this design is tweaked so that there are two isolated circulation paths, rather than an intake and exhaust path. The computer room is configured with an isolated hot aisle and the hot air is circulated, the heat is absorbed by the honeycomb wheel, and the cooler air is recirculated back into the computer room. 

The wheel is constantly rotating at low speed and the "hot" wheel rotates into a chamber where outside air is circulated through the honeycomb.  Outside air is returned to the ambient environment, carrying the computer room heat load with it.

This cooling technique is not only extremely efficient on its own but also isolates the computer room from the ambient environment and all the problems associated with bringing huge volumes of outside air into the data center.  This includes dirt, fine combustion particles, gasses, air with low or high dew point.  In this way the energy used or lost to contain these elements is minimized. 

Because of the inherent efficiency of the system and the isolation of the computer room and ambient air, this system works in cold climates, arid/desert climates, and the tropics.  For example, in north and south latitudes the mechanical efficiency (Mechanical load / I T load) may be as low as 0.04, to an efficiency of 0.08 in marine climates, and 0.25 in the dessert of the Middle East and tropics of Singapore.   KyotoCooling provides airside economizer cooling - without the air transfer.

How big is it? How little is it? What are the small and large parameters?

There are many installations in Europe using both the large wheels and the modules. 

The cooling technique is versatile with units as small as 90 kW of cooling capacity, deploying an 8' diameter wheel, a 300 kW using a 12' wheel, a 450 kW requiring  a 14' wheel, and the largest: a 600 to 850 kW system using a 20' diameter wheel. 

Where are some of them currently installed?

There are four installations in North America, one using 90 kW modules, two using 300 kW modules, and one using 450 kW modules.

I recently visited two installations in the US.  One in the northern latitudes of the US has three 300 kW-rated modular units installed.  During commissioning, at 28 F ambient conditions, they were able to achieve 1 MW of cooling with just two units operating, both at 50% capacity.  The second installation has two 450 kW units operating and were able to achieve 1.1 mW of cooling at 40 F ambient temperature without stressing the capacity of the units.  In both implementations, supplemental cooling was not required to achieve these cooling levels.

Tell me how acceptance in Europe has fared vs in the US. 

 There is more pressure to implement economizer cooling techniques in Europe than in North America.  Compliance with the EU rules, plus the higher cost of energy makes highly efficient cooling techniques essential there. In contrast, the drivers in north America are different with less regulation and a lower cost for energy. I’ve found the data center community in North America to be very conservative and risk averse.  There is a bias toward waiting for a "new" technology to be mature before it is considered.  My belief is that some of this is related to job protection – fear of losing one’s job if new technologies do not work.

Thanks Dr. Bob. See you at Symposium on May 11th in Santa Clara? Have a GREEN DAY!