Energy Efficiency In Data Centers In The Desert: Reducing Costs And Environmental Impact – Microsoft steps up plans to make its data centers more water-free / It turns to new technology to cool servers without using water

By Justin Calma, a science reporter with a decade of experience covering the environment, climate and energy. He is also the host of the Hell or High Water podcast.

Energy Efficiency In Data Centers In The Desert: Reducing Costs And Environmental Impact

Microsoft today stepped up its commitment to water and energy conservation in data centers, introducing new cooling technology and strategies that can push notoriously thirsty and power-hungry servers beyond their current limits. The company’s latest environmental pledge comes as it plans to dramatically expand the number of data centers it operates around the world, a move that could put more pressure on drought-stricken communities if the company doesn’t find ways to use less water.

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Microsoft Microsoft plans to reduce the amount of water used by its data centers by 95 percent by 2024, with the goal of “ultimately” eliminating water use. That builds on last year’s pledge to be “water positive” by the end of the decade, meaning it will store more water than it uses for its operations. In 2020, Microsoft also decided to become carbon negative during the same period, meaning it plans to conserve and conserve more than it emits planet-warming CO2.

Microsoft also announced today other sustainability initiatives that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions inside and outside the company. He is researching low-carbon building materials for data centers, including research on algae-based bricks and structural pipes made from fungi. He also previewed a new tool for Microsoft Cloud Sustainability that can help organizations track carbon emissions.

But the big debt involves data centers. Data centers like Microsoft’s are filled with servers that allow people to store files, send messages, shop and play online. All of these activities use a lot of energy and generate heat. Overheating can affect the performance and reliability of servers, but blasting them with air conditioning increases power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Water can be used to cool servers, but water has become an increasingly scarce resource in the arid regions where data centers operate.

A typical data center uses about as much water as a city of 30,000 to 40,000 people, or 3 to 5 million gallons a day, says Venkesh Uddamery, professor and director of the Center for Water Resources. at Texas Tech University. Microsoft says

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Microsoft’s data centers currently use adiabatic cooling, which relies on outside air to cool the interior temperature. It is a system that uses less electricity than air conditioning and less water than cooling towers. But when the temperature is above 85 degrees, the outside air is not very useful. That’s when an evaporative cooling system that uses water comes in. It works like a “mud cooler” – cooling the air through water-filled screens.

Microsoft today unveiled two key strategies it plans to use to achieve its water conservation goals. First: He tested how his servers performed at high temperatures, and found that he could set higher limits when the centers’ evaporative cooling systems kicked in. In the colder parts of the world – Amsterdam, Dublin, Virginia and Chicago – those higher set points could be completely free of water demand in the next few years.

Data centers in desert regions, where water scarcity is a bigger problem, will likely continue to run out of water

But Microsoft’s data centers in desert regions, where water scarcity is a bigger problem, will likely continue to wonder about water for years to come. Microsoft says the same strategy that could eliminate water use in Amsterdam and Dublin will reduce water use in desert regions by 60 percent by 2024.

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That’s where the second part of Microsoft’s plan comes in. To reduce its water footprint to zero in these hot and dry climates, Microsoft is considering a new way to cool servers: immersing them in a liquid bath of fluorocarbon. When servers operate, the heat they generate causes the liquid to boil at 122 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). The boiling liquid conducts heat away from the servers and then turns into rising steam. The steam hits the cooling tank lid, condenses and rains back into the bath. The process, called two-phase liquid immersion, creates a closed-loop cooling system that reduces water and electricity consumption while eliminating heat. According to the company, this strategy was inspired by cryptocurrency miners, who also use a lot of energy and have turned to liquid immersion for their computing equipment.

While the technology is promising, scaling it up will be another challenge, they said. Microsoft announced the first test with immersion in April and says the technology is still in the research and development phase. According to Lucas Beran, principal analyst at market research firm Dell’Oro Group, very few data centers — perhaps less than 2 percent — rely on immersion.

“You also think about the scale that someone like Microsoft has built in terms of the data centers and the amount of computing — it’s a huge supply chain. It’s a huge operational turnkey,” Beran says. Microsoft will have to study and plan how this change will affect data center operations, he noted. “It’s a big job, but one with very positive results.”

It will take a phased approach to roll out a new cooling strategy for data centers. Immersion cooling will require new, custom-built servers, and Microsoft will wait until it replaces its server configurations in aging data centers. Most of the new data centers the company plans will likely be built with hybrid cooling systems first, as it moves to new immersion technology.

Pdf) Challenges For Energy Efficiency In Local And Regional Data Centers

Microsoft plans to build 50-100 new data centers per year to meet demand for its cloud services. Global internet traffic is expected to double by next year. This is a huge opportunity for the company, but a big challenge to the company’s new sustainability goals.

For example, tensions are rising around data centers in Arizona, where Microsoft opened a new one this year. Arizona is facing reduced water supplies after the federal government declared the first water shortage on the Colorado River in August. The cuts, for now, will primarily limit water for agriculture, but some residents worry that new data centers in the region will increase competition for water resources.

Companies must address challenges specific to each location they are building a data center with a particular focus on locations under water pressure. “Not all solutions work,” says Uddameri. “You can be water positive as a company, but it’s not very beneficial if you store all the water in one place and create bigger deficits elsewhere.”

The post said Microsoft uses vapor cooling in its data centers when outside temperatures exceed 85 degrees Celsius. The previous version said the threshold was 85 degrees. We regret the error. The recent acceleration of data traffic and cloud-based technologies have changed the data center landscape and forced companies to build larger facilities – we include the largest in the world – Switch’s Citadel campus. More information is being processed now than ever before. Millions of videos, images, audio files and other data are downloaded, uploaded and stored.

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Switch Inc. (NYSE: SWCH ) is a company with the goal of intelligently and sustainably developing Internet connectivity. With the continued expansion of the company’s Citadel campus, Switch will achieve this goal, becoming the largest data center in the world.

The average data center worldwide is 100 sq. However, with the increasing demand for online communication in 2020, a 100 sq m facility is now considered small.

These demanding drivers are why Switch is building the Citadel campus, with each facility on campus measuring up to 1.4 million square feet. Specifically, the Citadel campus is located near Reno, Nevada. Indeed, it is adjacent to Tesla’s Gigafactory, and Apple and Walmart facilities.

The largest facility on the Citadel campus is called TAHOE RENO 1, with 1.4 million square meters and 130 megawatts of installed capacity. Indeed, the Citadel campus took the title of largest data center location in the world from the Lakeside Technology Center at 350 East Cermack in Chicago. Specifically, there is a 1.1-million-square-foot data center on Lakeside that is owned by Digital Realty.

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In total, the Citadel campus will add another 5.9 million square meters and 520 megawatts of capacity through seven facilities to be built starting in 2021. In total, the Citadel campus will have 7.3 million square meters and 650 megawatts of power when complete.

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