A comprehensive review of data centre integrated with renewable energy

Abstract

The data centre provides people with storing and transferring important data. This paper provides an overview of the state quo of data centres. In the context of the epidemic, people rely more on data centres. However, the traditional data centre consumes much power and has high carbon emissions, which is not conducive to long-term development. To optimise the energy utilisation of the data centre, this paper analyses the energy consumption components of the data centre and expounds on the existing IT equipment energy consumption model and cooling system energy model, respectively. Among them, the energy consumption of IT equipment and cooling system is the most significant part of the energy consumption of the whole data centre. There are different ways to enhance the efficiency of IT equipment and cooling system energy usage. To further estimate the data centre's energy efficiency and compare different data centres easily. The existing data centre evaluation metrics are classified and sorted, and the standards used by various stockholders are recommended. Thirdly, this paper also reviews the combination of renewable energy and data centres. The combination of renewable energy and data centres can be roughly divided into three categories: on-site generation, off-site generation and renewable energy provided by third parties. There are also many good practices in the world. This paper selects several representative data centres for specific analysis to offer references to the future site selection and preparation of other data centres.