Data Center Site Selection
Moreover, in most cases, data center site selection is based on multiple factors, such as potential business demand, network access and latency to users, geographical risk factors, and the availability and cost of energy. In the past, the cost of energy had been a predominant factor, but renewable energy sources may or may not have been a significant consideration. More recently, access to renewable generation has risen, but it cannot overcome the basic requirements for 7x24 continuous, reliable power sources.
Data Center Availability Versus Efficiency
Part of the challenge is the tradeoff between increased levels of facility redundancy to increase availability and energy efficiency. Data center availability is in the inherent nature of the facility design and operation. Yet, in many cases, more and more facility redundancy level requirements reductions are occurring, primarily due to improved IT virtualization, load sharing, and failover coupled with multisite geo-redundancy supported by high bandwidth network architecture.
Energy reuse has been the holy grail of energy efficiency, since even with a mythical PUE of 1.0, every megawatt hour of energy is being rejected into the environment. While TGG created the energy reuse effectiveness (ERE) metric 10 years ago, it is typically difficult and expensive to use the low-grade waste heat produced by air-cooled IT equipment. Only lately have there been some small but meaningful reuse projects, such as the Data Center Park in Stockholm. However, liquid cooling will help make energy recovery more cost-effective while improving ITE performance.
Energy storage is becoming more cost-effective for both supporting renewable energy sources at utility scale and larger data centers. This also has opened the discussion for data center participation in microgrids and distributed energy resources (DER).
The Bottom Line
What does 2021 have in store for data center designers, builders, operators, and IT staff? Are we pushing sustainability for data centers too far and too fast or not far and fast enough? How do we create and shape a holistic data center metric or evaluation criteria to provide a fair and realistic system giving weight of all these factors?
As we approach Earth Day (April 22), we need to look at the benefits data centers and the entire end-to-end digital ecosystem have brought to improve the human condition versus the ecological impact that is associated with the energy consumed. I believe that, over the last 10 years, the data center industry has done more to drive energy efficiency and expand the use of renewable energy than any other industry or even government.
For comparison, the auto industry (and the world) is trying to make the case for electric vehicles (EVs) as strategy for sustainability (reduce pollution, carbon emissions, and greenhouse gases). They have recognized and looked at well-to-wheels rather than just the efficiency of the vehicle, (measured in miles per gallon [MPG] or miles per kWh [MPGe]. For reference, the EPA defines MPGe on the conversion factor of 33.7 kWh/gallon of gasoline equivalent. The EPA also expresses an EV’s energy consumption in terms of the number of kilowatts per hour needed to run the vehicle for 100 miles (termed kWh/100 mi). Of course, there is no free lunch, despite the green EV hype — in many cases the energy to charge EVs still ultimately comes from power generated predominately by non-renewable sources.
So, will we get to net-zero energy or net-zero carbon? If so, what will it really cost — and who will for it pay?
Yet, what is the cost to do nothing?