Reliability, availability, and life-cycle cost (LCC) analysis of combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) integration to data centers considering electricity and cooling supplies

Abstract

The utilization of digital technology is increasing rapidly and it is causing a growth in the number of data centers around the world. Data centers provide essential services, making them known as mission-critical. Like other mission-critical facilities, data centers often use reliability and availability analysis to evaluate the level of safety of their operations. Reliable electricity and cooling supplies are vital for the data center’s operation, and almost all data centers rely on the power grid to feed their electrical and cooling systems. However, the power grid is considered an unreliable source, and power grid fragility is a raising concern among data center operators. An alternative to the power grid is a sustainable combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system, which can supply continuous electricity and cooling to a data center while providing local energy generation, energy cost saving, and emission benefits. To understand the impact of a CCHP integration on the reliability and availability of a grid-fed data center, an up-to-date electrical topology design and reliability block diagram models were created that take into account both electricity and cooling supplies. The results showed that the overall system reliability of a grid-fed data center increased from 49.23% to 74.62% with a CCHP integration. In terms of availability, a grid-fed data center with 2N redundant topology achieved the industry-accepted high availability level of 0.99999, also known as 5-nines. Moreover, the use of CCHP at the grid-fed data center increased the availability from 5-nines to 7-nines for the overall system. Thus, CCHP integration to a grid-fed data center provided higher reliability and availability for the overall system for even 2N redundant topology data centers. Moreover, based on the life-cycle cost (LCC) analysis, integrating CCHP systems into data centers has a promising outcome. However, when conducting an LCC analysis, we recommend considering the realistic cost of downtime along with the reliability-related exposure to properly assess the viability of alternative energy systems by data center investors and operators.