Sustainable data centre - why it matters

Sustainable Data Centre - Why It Matters?

Global warming, economic and ecological impacts of environmental changes are the issues affecting everyone across the globe, especially the population dependent on nature for livelihood. Growing data and internet demand have put the focus on the heart of today’s connected world – the data centres.

The data centre providers are meeting the exploding needs by increasing rack density and building ever-larger DC facilities. However, there is a dark side to it in terms of the impact on the limited natural resources.

Data Centres - A Power-Hungry Infrastructure

Operating data centres is a costly affair, especially when it comes to power consumption. Since the first-time the subject of data centre power consumption gained attention, power consumption growth has increased considerably. Even then, greater Internet connectivity is driving up the demand for data centre services.

However, going forward to the rising demand for increased computing power is giving rise to the energy-efficient technologies for sustainable operations on the data centres. Use of renewable resources to generate power for data centres’ use is one such example.

Data Centres Have Huge Water Footprints

Water is an essential component of data centre operations, which is why it receives significant attention across the globe. The primary reason that calls for sustainable data centres is the excess use of water in their operations. A large data centre needs billions of gallons of water, mostly for cooling purposes.

In the countries like India where hydropower is one of the sources of electricity generation, water consumption consumed by the DCs adds to their water footprints.

Since most of the water need in a DC is for cooling purposes, global data centres have started to use waterless cooling technology to save water. Similarly, they are using Smart AI-Based Cooling Management System in which hi-tech sensors monitor the surrounding temperature to estimate the required cooling.

Data Centres Generate Waste in Varied Forms

Waste management is crucial for sustainable development, and the same holds true for data centres as well. To maintain operational efficiency, data centres need advanced heating and cooling systems, which require a lot of water. Similarly, they generate a considerable amount of heat during the operations, which can also be considered a form of waste. Also, there is e-waste such as old servers, batteries, and similar other products coming out of the DCs.

Here are the solutions that data centres implement as a step towards sustainability:

• Recycling and reuse of chiller water
• Use of advanced technologies like evaporative cooling to utilize the generated heat in a DC for cooling purposes
• Responsible recycling of e-waste to minimize its impact on the environment

Cost of Coal Power vs Renewable Energy

According to the latest report on the use of coal power from the London based thinktank Carbontracker, coal power would be too expensive to continue by 2030. For now, Carbontracker reports, about 62% of present coal-fired power capacities have higher operating costs than renewable sources.

The governments in the countries where coal is the primary source of electricity (like India), will either have to increase the prices or subsidize the coal plants heavily to keep power generation profitable.

Switching to renewable energy (which has already begun), over the next 20 to 30 years is the only option to keep the electricity affordable in India. The energy-intensive operations in data centres, therefore, have increased their reliance on green energy going forward.

STT GDC India’s Efforts in Reducing Carbon & Water Footprints

STT GDC India has been committed to save the environment through our green data centre structure. Our efforts towards the environment include the following:

Towards a Sustainable Data Centre Operations

Climate change affects everyone, and that is why everyone is required to make efforts to do their bit about it. Additionally, the warmer climate requires more cooling at data centres, meaning DCs based in India would have higher cooling costs, which is 50% of total power consumption in a data centre.

With the increasing awareness towards environment protection, the world’s largest data centre owners and users have already started shifting towards sustainable data centre operations.

As a step towards sustainability, STT GDC India plans to deploy energy-efficient data centres that are primarily focused on using renewable energy. Some of our planned activities for the near future:

• New Captive Power Generation Systems – Green & Gas Based
• Next-Gen Battery System as an alternative to the existing UPS system
• Magnatron AC Saver for intelligent and power-efficient cooling