In search of the balance between energy & water usage in datacenters

Introduction of the Datacenter Jedi articles

Those who have known me for several years know that I have written several articles about data centers in the past. After not doing this for several years, I decided to start doing this again on LinkedIn.

Besides the fact that I enjoy sharing my ideas about data centers with others, I am increasingly getting the idea that I should do this. After all, more and more people are passing judgment on data centers while not always seeing the whole picture.

The first article is about the balance between energy & water usage in data centers.

All these articles are written on personal capacity.

Finding the balance between energy and water usage in data centers

More and more data center companies take energy and water consumption in their data centers seriously. Important here is to find the right balance in both energy & water consumption. Datacenter organizations are asked if they could not stop using water their our cooling installations. Of course that can be done, the question is whether this is ultimately desirable.

First of all, let me go back to many years ago. There was an increasing need for data centers with the result that more and more data centers were built. At that time, there was sufficient electricity available and also at a low price. During the last few years, the need for energy increased and energy prices rose, combined with the fact that high energy consumption does not benefit the environment. From then on, more and more attention came to energy consumption in data centers. As a datacenter organization, you have no influence on the energy consumption of customers' ICT systems. However, a lot of energy could actually be saved with the cooling systems, for example. In the datacenter industry, many savings have been successfully implemented in recent years, partly due to ISO50001 Energy Management and regulations, for instance.

In many situations, energy consumption can still be reduced, we have not yet reached the optimum and, at the same time, recently there has been increasing attention to the water consumption of data centers in combination with water scarcity.

In the near future, even more energy can be saved and/or reused through, for example, liquid cooling, but that is not the case yet. This article therefore does not discuss liquid cooling further.

More and more people were therefore wondering how the optimum can be achieved. Should we consume water for our cooling system or not? A lot of energy can be saved when cooling is done using water. So is it preferable to stop consuming water, resulting in increased energy consumption?

?

Many datacenters have the majority of their energy usage, covered with renewable energy. The last percentages for renewable energy cannot always be obtained due to, for example, the lack of renewable energy in a country. In addition, however, we do have location-based energy generation and distribution. The renewable energy coverage concerns a "billing process". Ultimately, energy does come from non-renewable energy sources. However, these non-renewable energy sources consume a lot of water in many situations. If we stopped using water for our cooling systems, not only would electricity consumption increase, the generation of the amount of electricity would then indirectly lead to higher water consumption. Not in the datacenter itself, but at the energy supplier in the power plant.

"It is therefore very important to be able to put the various energy flows in a datacenter in the right context.

Each datacenter therefore needs to determine what the optimal energy balance and consumption should be, this depends on various factors such as design, local weather conditions but also topics like how the energy has been generated outside the datacenter boundary.

It should be noted that potable water is not used at a power plant and in most cases potable water is used in a data center, so there is a difference in the water consumption.

Back to the water consumption of data centers. In many cases, drinking water is consumed for the cooling systems which provides cooling through evaporation. There is a simple explanation for the use of potable water in adiabatic cooling systems. For years, more than enough water was available at a low price. In contrast, applying bore-hole water, for example, is not straightforward, more water treatment is required in many situations which also could result in an higher energy usage used by the pumps which need to push the water through sand packs for filtration, for example.

The focus on water consumption is relatively new, there is a greater scarcity of water in many places.

Should we stop using water in data centers or should we look to the local circumstances and find the right balance between using energy and water ?

The possibility of striking a water source and starting to use that water for the cooling systems is regularly raised as a possibility. However, is it wise if each company is going to strike its own water source, pump up the water and then treat it. It remains to be seen whether it is ultimately better from a technical point of view and control by competent authority, I personally think not.

In addition to the above, ASHRAE A1A is very interesting. Important development to save energy and I look forward to the developments what this means for energy and water consumption, as well as the possibilities to use heat from a data center usefully somewhere else

?

Conclusion:

Could it possibly be that using water for cooling in data centers is indeed more sustainable than currently suggested by many people? By definition, this cannot simply be determined it seems to me. There will have to be an assessment of what the local climate impact is with any given choice.

It may therefore be that in one place no water needs to be evaporated for cooling a data center and in another place in the world where sufficient water is available it does.

When a profile is drawn up showing the water demand and water scarcity per month, it can be determined what the most desirable way of cooling could be.

#datacenters #energy #water #sustainability #datacenterjedi #datacenter #data center