The world consumes enormous amounts of energy and water as our lives become more “virtualized” through computer and networking technology. We think of the cloud as a cutting-edge tool that increases efficiency, and so it is, but it all comes at a cost. Data centers in the U.S. alone consume 575 gigawatts every year, or 2 percent of all the power delivered to the grid, according to a recent article in AOL Energy. Half of that energy is used for cooling – keeping the cloud cool.
This prodigious use of energy for IT is the sort of thing that inspires innovators to look for solutions and new pathways to sustainability. Danbury, Connecticut-based IT firm Intertech, in partnership with global construction company Skanska, recently debuted a “paradigm-shifting” technology called eOPTI-TRAX that promises to exponentially reduce the resources required for cooling data centers.
The principal metric for analyzing data center efficiency is PUE, or Power Utilization Effectiveness. Put simply, PUE is the ratio of power delivered to a facility to the actual power arriving at the servers; the lower the ratio the more efficient the data center. A 1-to-1 ratio means that every watt of energy delivered to the center is used at the server; eOPTI-TRAX boasts a “mechanical” PUE of 1.012, greatly improving the 1.4 to 1.6 PUE of most other solutions.
Using eOPTI-TRAX can cut the typical 90 watt power consumption of a single server to a mere 0.3 watts. Often innovation comes from adapting a proven technology to a new application. Instead of cooling server racks with evaporative cooling systems that waste “trillions of gallons of water each year” or simply blasting air conditioned air through server rack aisles – both very inefficient – the eOPTI-TRAX system pumps coolant through pipes routed directly into the server racks themselves. Think of how your refrigerator works.
A data center of 1500 servers utilizing eOPI-TRAX draws 500 watts with little water loss. That same center cooled conventionally consumes 90,000 watts, losing 4,300 gallons of water per day.
In a demonstration at Intertech’s “analyst day” participants enjoyed a cool 77 degrees in the “hot aisle” of a data center simulating 130 kilowatt load:
“If someone told you that, on an 88-degree day, you could cool 130 kilowatts of load with 7 kilowatts of cooling energy, most people would say it’s impossible,” said Intertech CEO Earl Keisling. “But we’re doing it.”
The first commercial installation of eOPI-TRAX goes online August 15 for Telus in Quebec, Canada.
Main image credit: bandarji, courtesy Flickr