Warming data centers
As the DCD Intelligence statistics show, the total heat generated by the servers of all the data centers of the planet would be enough to compensate for the annual electricity consumption of such a state as the United Kingdom, and from the technological side, the development and implementation of such technologies do not pose any particular difficulties. We need to establish a technological link between the data center and the urban heating system, while companies in turn are required to invest in the development and implementation of internal pipelines, pumps and control systems.
Engineers of many companies have long been working on the development of mechanisms that will allow the use of heat energy of servers inside data centers with profit. Until today, quite a few such projects have been implemented and quite successfully. The released energy is used for heating the office premises located nearby to the data center. The most famous of them are: TELUS server farm in Canada (Vancouver), Telecity in France, Telehouse data center in the UK, and IBM data centers in Finland and Switzerland.
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Another very interesting project on which we will dwell in more detail is the new project of a 12-story data center. It was proposed for the Denny Triangle project, which is near Seattle, WA. Engineers from companies like Clise Properties and Graphite Design Group have already sent the project plan to the local municipality for review. An unusual data center is planned to be built near the campus of Amazon Rufus 2.0, and there is currently a parking lot there.
It is planned to maximize the use of all the space inside such a 12-story data center. On the lower floors, the designers of Clise Properties are planning to deploy diesel generators and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system. Each machine room with an area of ​​about 1,100 m 2 is planned to be located on the remaining 8 floors. For fuel tanks the basement of the data center will be allocated. Plans to complete the construction of this project by the beginning of 2017.
Since the generator sets and diesel fuel tanks are planned to be located on the lower floors of the building, in case of emergencies (power outages or failure in the central power supply system), this will effectively supply diesel generators without the help of elevators, connecting the fuel truck directly to the tanks. This option is much more efficient than the example to which many data center operators in New York had to resort to during the hurricane Sandy - live chains were created to transfer buckets of fuel to the upper floors, where generators are placed because of insufficient forethought.
The air temperature, which comes from the machine rooms of server farms, can heat up to 38 o C. Heat, as a rule, is wasted. Clise Properties' engineers have proposed a data center heat recovery system. Such a system allows rational use of the heat generated, and also saves money for heating office and residential premises. Based on the calculations, this system will allow to recover up to 12 MW, this reduces the load on the central heating system by almost 6% and by 30% reduces the consumption of thermal energy, which is used to heat nearby residential complexes.
The plans of Clise Properties to redirect excess heat energy to the system of nearby office and residential buildings in the same way as Amazon plans to use the heat generated by the servers to the Westin Building data centers to heat their campus. This is a new Amazon headquarters project in the capital of Washington, includes three spherical and three office high-rise buildings, which will be part of the Denny Triangle office and trade campus, which covers an area of ​​30 hectares. Such spherical blocks with a height of 24 to 30 m are called by architects themselves “biocupol”. In addition to offices, canteens, recreation areas, meeting rooms and conferences, the complex will include almost 1,700 m 2 of retail space for 1,800 Amazon employees.
Seattle is known for its highly developed technology industry. Being the "homeland" of companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, this city has played an important role in the emergence of cloud services. The 12-storey data center Clise Properties will contribute to the development of an ecosystem of high-tech companies.
Despite the fact that the project is still at an initial stage, Richard Stevenson, president of Clise Properties, said in an interview with the Puget Sound Business Journal, he enjoys high interest among potential tenants. Such a data center will be commercial, the most diverse customers will be able to place their computing power here.
A good example in the use of such technologies for heat recovery data center is TELUS. The company's specialists use heat to heat the nearby tree nursery, where climate research is conducted. The power supply system is called the District Energy System (DES) and is used to ensure the operability of the heating and cooling system of the neighboring Telus Garden residential and office complex.
“By reusing energy, which is usually lost, through recovery, it is in our power to create a truly innovative project. The Telus Garden complex will be one of the most environmentally friendly facilities of its kind in North America, ”said Andrea Gorets, Telus senior vice president for strategic initiatives and communications. The data center will provide 80% of the skyscraper with the necessary heat energy.
Engineers at WSP Group have developed an innovative heat recovery system for the Telehouse West data center with a capacity of approximately 9 MW in London to heat nearby houses and businesses. $ 180 million was spent on the construction of the data center, part of the money was spent on developing the next mechanism for using heat from the server farm.
The heat generated by the data center is used to heat water in a nearby pool. The excess heat generated during operation of the server and network equipment accumulates and heats the water. In turn, water is pumped into the heat exchange system of the adjacent pool, thus it warms the water that flows into the pool itself. At the same time for the year data center can generate up to 2,800 MW of heat hours.
At a depth of 30 meters under the Assumption Cathedral there is a 2 MW data center. The cooling system uses cold sea water. The spent hot air from the servers is sent through a pipeline through heat pumps to the district heating network, which supplies the residents of Helsinki with body and hot water. The data center is able to provide heat for up to 500 private homes.
The data center was built by IBM on the site of a private university in Syracuse, New York, using natural gas micro-turbines to generate electricity. These eco-friendly 65 kW micro-turbines are integrated directly into double-conversion UPS. Turbines generate electricity, generate heat and power the data center cooling systems, as well as buildings that are located next to the data center.
Quebecor, a Canadian media company in which heat is generated from servers in a data center in Winnipeg, is sent to heat a local newspaper office. A second pipe was laid from the place of heat collection to the office pick-up pipe, which is located on top.
Technical implementation of the described solution is not difficult. Heat pumps have been known for many decades. Obstacles to the implementation in Moscow are tariffs for heat and electricity, as well as, oddly enough, a fairly well-developed infrastructure of centralized heating in places where data centers are located.
Consider the example of Moscow. For an industrial consumer, the cost of 1 MWh is approximately 1,000 rubles for heat and 3,500 ... 4,000 rubles for electrical energy. To convert 1 MWh of low potential heat of data centers (maximum 45 ... 50) into heat used in the heat network (90 ... 110) using a heat pump, approximately 0.25-0.3 MWh are needed. It is easy to see that the cost of heat obtained in this way is 1000 rubles. It is unlikely that the heat supply company will buy more than it sells itself. If we consider that the data center also has capital expenditures in the amount of $ 250 ... 750 thousand, then it is not at all clear why we need to do this.
Already in 2015, the price of electricity in Russia for industrial consumers will be perhaps the highest in Europe. Perhaps such a scheme would make sense if there were consumers for whom new heating networks and boilers need to be built (as described in the article), but usually data centers are located in areas with a fairly developed infrastructure of heating networks and expensive data center energy is not particularly needed . The described solution is used in data centers, but in a limited mode and only during the absence of heating. Then, after the conversion, you can use the heat of data centers for easy heating of the radiators in the same data centers or preparing hot water for the needs of the staff, replacing direct electric heating (boilers, oil radiators). Such use of heat is economical. But this is a fraction, a maximum of a few percent of what a data center emits into the atmosphere. So in order for the data center to become a serious source of heat in Moscow, a rare combination of conditions is needed.
The idea, of course, is very beautiful, but, alas, at current prices for heat energy in Russia looks somewhat premature. We ourselves think in this direction - in particular, heating our offices on ul. Borovaya is partially provided by the heat generated by the data center. Thanks to a special heat pump, the heat from the data center's cooling system is used to heat water in the radiators of the heating and air in the inlet ventilation: thus the offices are heated. The air in a number of infrastructure facilities and technical corridors of the data center on Borovaya and Korovinskoe highways is heated by the engine rooms through plate heat exchangers.
But there are a few nuances. The data center "resets" low-grade heat. The temperature of the “warm” water in the cooling system is about 12 ° C, and in order to get the temperature sufficient for heating, we have to install a heat pump - a cooling machine that takes heat from the water in the cold supply system and gives it to the water in the system heating, heating it to about 45 o C. Electricity is being spent on transferring heat: to transfer 3 kW of thermal power, about 1 kW of electrical power must be expended. Now in Moscow, heat energy is about 4 times cheaper than electricity - it is clear that in this situation, the use of a heat pump is more expensive than heating from the city’s heating networks. In addition, typical heat engineering solutions involve the use of water with a temperature of 80 ° C, therefore, in the case of using a standard heat pump (giving no more than 45 ° C) it is necessary to install increased radiators.
As for the heating of air from the engine rooms through recuperators, this solution does not consume electricity, but it works only for the neighboring rooms (to pull the air ducts for a long distance is completely irrational).
At the central office of DataLine, located above the OST data center on Borovaya, while one heat pump is installed. With its help, we utilize up to 15% of the heat “dumped” by the OST data center. This is enough to heat 1500 m 2 of office space (during periods when the temperature outside does not fall below -15 o C, with more severe frosts you have to reheat the water in the electric boiler). It is difficult to talk about the payback of such a decision, and we treat this project as an experiment.
The idea to heat entire cities with the help of heat generated by data centers, in modern realities will be difficult to apply. The temperature of the heat carrier returned after the engine rooms is not too high compared with the temperature of the heat carrier used in the central heating batteries of Russian apartment buildings. In addition, data centers are located outside residential areas (these are increased energy requirements of the data center, which are not in residential areas, and security requirements), and the transfer of heat over distances in our climate would be accompanied by additional significant heat losses. As of the current day, the variant using the heat generated by the data center for heating the premises or ensuring the operation of some objects or systems in the complex of buildings around the data center itself looks realistic and, in some cases, realized.
Engineers of many companies have long been working on the development of mechanisms that will allow the use of heat energy of servers inside data centers with profit. Until today, quite a few such projects have been implemented and quite successfully. The released energy is used for heating the office premises located nearby to the data center. The most famous of them are: TELUS server farm in Canada (Vancouver), Telecity in France, Telehouse data center in the UK, and IBM data centers in Finland and Switzerland.
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Unusual 12-storey data center (USA)
Another very interesting project on which we will dwell in more detail is the new project of a 12-story data center. It was proposed for the Denny Triangle project, which is near Seattle, WA. Engineers from companies like Clise Properties and Graphite Design Group have already sent the project plan to the local municipality for review. An unusual data center is planned to be built near the campus of Amazon Rufus 2.0, and there is currently a parking lot there.
It is planned to maximize the use of all the space inside such a 12-story data center. On the lower floors, the designers of Clise Properties are planning to deploy diesel generators and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system. Each machine room with an area of ​​about 1,100 m 2 is planned to be located on the remaining 8 floors. For fuel tanks the basement of the data center will be allocated. Plans to complete the construction of this project by the beginning of 2017.
Since the generator sets and diesel fuel tanks are planned to be located on the lower floors of the building, in case of emergencies (power outages or failure in the central power supply system), this will effectively supply diesel generators without the help of elevators, connecting the fuel truck directly to the tanks. This option is much more efficient than the example to which many data center operators in New York had to resort to during the hurricane Sandy - live chains were created to transfer buckets of fuel to the upper floors, where generators are placed because of insufficient forethought.
The air temperature, which comes from the machine rooms of server farms, can heat up to 38 o C. Heat, as a rule, is wasted. Clise Properties' engineers have proposed a data center heat recovery system. Such a system allows rational use of the heat generated, and also saves money for heating office and residential premises. Based on the calculations, this system will allow to recover up to 12 MW, this reduces the load on the central heating system by almost 6% and by 30% reduces the consumption of thermal energy, which is used to heat nearby residential complexes.
The plans of Clise Properties to redirect excess heat energy to the system of nearby office and residential buildings in the same way as Amazon plans to use the heat generated by the servers to the Westin Building data centers to heat their campus. This is a new Amazon headquarters project in the capital of Washington, includes three spherical and three office high-rise buildings, which will be part of the Denny Triangle office and trade campus, which covers an area of ​​30 hectares. Such spherical blocks with a height of 24 to 30 m are called by architects themselves “biocupol”. In addition to offices, canteens, recreation areas, meeting rooms and conferences, the complex will include almost 1,700 m 2 of retail space for 1,800 Amazon employees.
Seattle is known for its highly developed technology industry. Being the "homeland" of companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, this city has played an important role in the emergence of cloud services. The 12-storey data center Clise Properties will contribute to the development of an ecosystem of high-tech companies.
Despite the fact that the project is still at an initial stage, Richard Stevenson, president of Clise Properties, said in an interview with the Puget Sound Business Journal, he enjoys high interest among potential tenants. Such a data center will be commercial, the most diverse customers will be able to place their computing power here.
Telus Garden (Canada)
A good example in the use of such technologies for heat recovery data center is TELUS. The company's specialists use heat to heat the nearby tree nursery, where climate research is conducted. The power supply system is called the District Energy System (DES) and is used to ensure the operability of the heating and cooling system of the neighboring Telus Garden residential and office complex.
“By reusing energy, which is usually lost, through recovery, it is in our power to create a truly innovative project. The Telus Garden complex will be one of the most environmentally friendly facilities of its kind in North America, ”said Andrea Gorets, Telus senior vice president for strategic initiatives and communications. The data center will provide 80% of the skyscraper with the necessary heat energy.
Telehouse (UK)
Engineers at WSP Group have developed an innovative heat recovery system for the Telehouse West data center with a capacity of approximately 9 MW in London to heat nearby houses and businesses. $ 180 million was spent on the construction of the data center, part of the money was spent on developing the next mechanism for using heat from the server farm.
The heat generated by the data center is used to heat water in a nearby pool. The excess heat generated during operation of the server and network equipment accumulates and heats the water. In turn, water is pumped into the heat exchange system of the adjacent pool, thus it warms the water that flows into the pool itself. At the same time for the year data center can generate up to 2,800 MW of heat hours.
Underground data center (Finland)
At a depth of 30 meters under the Assumption Cathedral there is a 2 MW data center. The cooling system uses cold sea water. The spent hot air from the servers is sent through a pipeline through heat pumps to the district heating network, which supplies the residents of Helsinki with body and hot water. The data center is able to provide heat for up to 500 private homes.
IBM and Syracuse University (USA)
The data center was built by IBM on the site of a private university in Syracuse, New York, using natural gas micro-turbines to generate electricity. These eco-friendly 65 kW micro-turbines are integrated directly into double-conversion UPS. Turbines generate electricity, generate heat and power the data center cooling systems, as well as buildings that are located next to the data center.
Quebecor (Canada)
Quebecor, a Canadian media company in which heat is generated from servers in a data center in Winnipeg, is sent to heat a local newspaper office. A second pipe was laid from the place of heat collection to the office pick-up pipe, which is located on top.
Expert Comments
Alexey Soldatov, General Director of DataPro:
Technical implementation of the described solution is not difficult. Heat pumps have been known for many decades. Obstacles to the implementation in Moscow are tariffs for heat and electricity, as well as, oddly enough, a fairly well-developed infrastructure of centralized heating in places where data centers are located.Consider the example of Moscow. For an industrial consumer, the cost of 1 MWh is approximately 1,000 rubles for heat and 3,500 ... 4,000 rubles for electrical energy. To convert 1 MWh of low potential heat of data centers (maximum 45 ... 50) into heat used in the heat network (90 ... 110) using a heat pump, approximately 0.25-0.3 MWh are needed. It is easy to see that the cost of heat obtained in this way is 1000 rubles. It is unlikely that the heat supply company will buy more than it sells itself. If we consider that the data center also has capital expenditures in the amount of $ 250 ... 750 thousand, then it is not at all clear why we need to do this.
Already in 2015, the price of electricity in Russia for industrial consumers will be perhaps the highest in Europe. Perhaps such a scheme would make sense if there were consumers for whom new heating networks and boilers need to be built (as described in the article), but usually data centers are located in areas with a fairly developed infrastructure of heating networks and expensive data center energy is not particularly needed . The described solution is used in data centers, but in a limited mode and only during the absence of heating. Then, after the conversion, you can use the heat of data centers for easy heating of the radiators in the same data centers or preparing hot water for the needs of the staff, replacing direct electric heating (boilers, oil radiators). Such use of heat is economical. But this is a fraction, a maximum of a few percent of what a data center emits into the atmosphere. So in order for the data center to become a serious source of heat in Moscow, a rare combination of conditions is needed.
Yury Samoilov, General Director of DataLine:
The idea, of course, is very beautiful, but, alas, at current prices for heat energy in Russia looks somewhat premature. We ourselves think in this direction - in particular, heating our offices on ul. Borovaya is partially provided by the heat generated by the data center. Thanks to a special heat pump, the heat from the data center's cooling system is used to heat water in the radiators of the heating and air in the inlet ventilation: thus the offices are heated. The air in a number of infrastructure facilities and technical corridors of the data center on Borovaya and Korovinskoe highways is heated by the engine rooms through plate heat exchangers.But there are a few nuances. The data center "resets" low-grade heat. The temperature of the “warm” water in the cooling system is about 12 ° C, and in order to get the temperature sufficient for heating, we have to install a heat pump - a cooling machine that takes heat from the water in the cold supply system and gives it to the water in the system heating, heating it to about 45 o C. Electricity is being spent on transferring heat: to transfer 3 kW of thermal power, about 1 kW of electrical power must be expended. Now in Moscow, heat energy is about 4 times cheaper than electricity - it is clear that in this situation, the use of a heat pump is more expensive than heating from the city’s heating networks. In addition, typical heat engineering solutions involve the use of water with a temperature of 80 ° C, therefore, in the case of using a standard heat pump (giving no more than 45 ° C) it is necessary to install increased radiators.
As for the heating of air from the engine rooms through recuperators, this solution does not consume electricity, but it works only for the neighboring rooms (to pull the air ducts for a long distance is completely irrational).
At the central office of DataLine, located above the OST data center on Borovaya, while one heat pump is installed. With its help, we utilize up to 15% of the heat “dumped” by the OST data center. This is enough to heat 1500 m 2 of office space (during periods when the temperature outside does not fall below -15 o C, with more severe frosts you have to reheat the water in the electric boiler). It is difficult to talk about the payback of such a decision, and we treat this project as an experiment.
Mikhail Lukovnikov, director of the data center "TrustInfo" (Servionika, I-Teco Group):
The idea to heat entire cities with the help of heat generated by data centers, in modern realities will be difficult to apply. The temperature of the heat carrier returned after the engine rooms is not too high compared with the temperature of the heat carrier used in the central heating batteries of Russian apartment buildings. In addition, data centers are located outside residential areas (these are increased energy requirements of the data center, which are not in residential areas, and security requirements), and the transfer of heat over distances in our climate would be accompanied by additional significant heat losses. As of the current day, the variant using the heat generated by the data center for heating the premises or ensuring the operation of some objects or systems in the complex of buildings around the data center itself looks realistic and, in some cases, realized.Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/249099/
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