Abstract
11% of Irish electricity was consumed by data centres in 2020. The Irish data centre industry and the cooling methods utilised require reformative actions in the coming years to meet EU Energy policies. The resell of heat, alternative cooling methods or carbon reduction methods are all possibilities to conform to these policies. This study aims to determine the viability of the resell of waste heat from data centres both technically and economically. This was determined using a novel application of thermodynamics to determine waste heat recovery potential in Irish data centres, and the current methods of heat generation for economical comparison. This paper also explores policy surrounding waste heat recovery within the industry. The Recoverable Carnot Equivalent Power (RCEP) is theoretically calculated for the three potential cooling methods for Irish data centres. These are air, hybrid, and immersion cooling techniques. This is the maximum useable heat that can be recovered from a data centre rack. This study is established under current operating conditions which are optimised for cooling performance, that air cooling has the highest potential RCEP of 0.39 kW/rack. This is approximately 8% of the input electrical power that can be captured as useable heat. Indicating that Irish data centres have the energy potential to be heat providers in the Irish economy. This study highlighted the technical and economic aspects of prevalent cooling techniques and determined air cooling heat recovery cost can be reduced to 0.01 €/kWhth using offsetting. This is financially competitive with current heating solutions in Ireland.
Highlights
Irish data centres consume an estimated 11% of Irish generated electricity
Technical Analysis The thermodynamics analysis indicates a preference for air cooling in terms of heat recovery
The idea of data centres recovered heat being financially competitive with conventional means such as a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit or gas-fired boilers is explored
Summary
Irish data centres consume an estimated 11% of Irish generated electricity. These servers can be utilised as data storage or compute power. This is the source of the requirement for cooling. Data centre cooling is responsible for 11% [1] to 40% [2] of the total input electricity. There is a requirement for metrics such as Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) to be consolidated to enhance energy effectiveness in Irish data centres. Along with the government, are aiming to reform sustainability goals, tackle the rapid growth and minimise the negative environmental impacts data centres could pose during this rapid growth
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