Abstract
Due to the recent growth of the Internet and the rapid development of information and communications technology, the number of data centers and the amount of power consumed are expected to increase rapidly. However, these data centers consume large amounts of electric power throughout the year, regardless of working days or holidays; hence, measures to save energy at these facilities are urgently required. A numerical analysis was conducted in this study by changing various variables to examine the effects of various design and operating conditions on outdoor air-cooling systems and to derive some operating plans to minimize electric power consumption through the introduction of outside air into the computer room. When designing the system, it is desirable to select airflow considering various factors, such as the heat generated by the computer equipment, the efficiency of the fan, and the performance of the refrigerator, rather than the theoretical maximum outdoor airflow. As a result, the optimal design air volume was calculated according to the equipment load. Consequently, the optimal design air volume of the modeled computer system was obtained as 26,200 m3/h. The application of this optimal design air volume is expected to yield an annual energy-saving effect of 56.1% compared with the power consumption in the air-conditioning period during which the application of outdoor air cooling is impossible.
Highlights
There are a total of 158 data centers in Korea, and the domestic data center market is expected to grow rapidly over the five years, from 2019
Using the analysis model and tools developed in the previous section, we performed numerical analysis to analyze the outdoor air-cooling system application plan and its effect according to the design and operating parameters of the computer room
We examined the effects of various factors on the energy consumption of cooling equipment in the context of installing an outdoor air-cooling system in a computer room
Summary
There are a total of 158 data centers in Korea, and the domestic data center market is expected to grow rapidly over the five years, from 2019. Considering the huge amount of electricity consumed by computer rooms when operating air conditioning throughout the year to maintain a constant and secure environment for information and communications technology (ICT) equipment, measures to save energy are urgently required. PUE is the ratio of the total amount of energy used by a data center to the energy consumed by ICT equipment. After installing an outdoor air-cooling system, Chuncheon Naver Data Center operated an air cooler for fewer than 30 days a year [3]. In countries located in geographically cold regions, several data centers actively use outdoor air-cooling systems, with their PUE maintained below 1.25 (Google, Hamina, Finland) [4] through a control operation configured to maximize the use of outdoor air or even below 1.2 (Facebook, Dublin, Ireland) [4] by relying completely on the outdoor air-cooling system
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