ever thought about a green powered Data-Center?
is it possible?
what about the costs?
what are the biggest problems constructing a green powered (or better sustainable) data center?
Waste managment wise, recycle, manage your waste properly.
You could conceivably run your generators on Bio Diesel. Be sure you have a fuel heating system for the winter or have the fuel bunkers in doors with fuel heating systems on the filters and fuel lines. You could have a problem if it fails though.
Data Centers Mostly use just power to keep things going. Some water. Its not like it's a factory. An Efficient building, energy usage wise will help the data center, but be careful that you don't cut your left off or paint yourself into a corner. I'd not be happy running a data center that's supposed to have lots of uptime on wind power for example. And I want my power to be bullet proof.
Oh, you're going to have a VERY hard time finding green batteries. Best you can do is be sure to recycle them properly.
__________________
CNN Internet Technologies
Data Center Manager
And sustainable data-centers with less/zero costs in the long run.
Due to ever increasing energy-prices!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rmgill
Waste managment wise, recycle, manage your waste properly.
Best Waste is no Waste.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rmgill
You could conceivably run your generators on Bio Diesel. Be sure you have a fuel heating system for the winter or have the fuel bunkers in doors with fuel heating systems on the filters and fuel lines. You could have a problem if it fails though.
Good tip.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rmgill
Data Centers Mostly use just power to keep things going. Some water. Its not like it's a factory. An Efficient building, energy usage wise will help the data center, but be careful that you don't cut your left off or paint yourself into a corner. I'd not be happy running a data center that's supposed to have lots of uptime on wind power for example. And I want my power to be bullet proof.
Ok, can i get more details?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rmgill
Oh, you're going to have a VERY hard time finding green batteries. Best you can do is be sure to recycle them properly.
You surely want to know, why I ask such things, the cause is: I make a study if green data-centers are possible and if, how they are possible and I want to hear as much suggestions as I can get.
So many thanks in advance for more postings to this thread!
Vert interesting trends happening in this area. Change your whole paradigm. Batteries and generators are out. Think about compressed air technology, ultra-capacitors and gas turbines. (Flywheels are good, but they are a 'bridge' technology. They only provide enough power to support the load until a long term power source can be brought on line.)
Chillers, air handlers, chill water; probably not. Think about CO2 as a cooling medium.
There is exactly one LEED certified data center in the world. This data center represents everything that we can do today. Tomorrow?
Highmark Data Center Receives Silver LEED(R) Certification Highmark Data Center, a 90,000-SF facility built to service one of the nation's largest health insurance providers, has received a Silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the United States Green Building Council. Designed by RTKL, one of the nation's leading architectural and engineering firms, this complements the Tier Three Certification that the project had previously received from The Uptime Institute, which, according to the available research, makes it the only data center in the country that is dual certified.
--> more at
--> http://www.datacenterjournal.com/New...article_id=500
Great Information! The Highmark Data Center for me is THE standard new data centers must beat!
So to guarantee a high as possible availability a data center mustn't be power-grid dependent!
And energy-prices also won't become lower. The core of the Internet in the USA is consuming 6TWh/year of eletric power (see: http://www.csee.usf.edu/~christen/energy/main.html), it's definitivly too much.
one additional question I have: are there any ideas how an conventional/existing data-center can be upgraded to be more sustainable/green? how would it be possible?
There was some work in this area a few years ago by the Rocky Mountain Institute -- just type data center into the search box on their home page. You may also want to check for new info from time to time at the slow-starting Green Grid.
I can also recommend ecologee.net, espcially if you have some knowledge of German (they need to translate still more information, but it's a wiki so ervery one could do this). They have an immense amount of links and ideas in their wiki.
I can't see a way around the kind of power density a data center needs with out a generator. You'd never get enough solar panels or wind generators nearby unless you built a whole farm and even then, it's not a good 24/7/365 backup source.
Biodiesel is a good method, but you need to build it so it'll keep the tanks heated (a source of energy waste) for wintertime AND you've got to either heat the fuel lines and filters or you're looking at fuel that has gelled at temperatures above freezing. Gelled fuel is useless and it won't flow so, if you were to have a power event in the fall/winter/spring and your fuel heating system had failed you could very conceivably have an event where your generator couldn't start and you lost your facility's backup power after the UPS failed.
Good old Lead Acid batteries are a good source of storing power. They're dense, reliable and can be recycled nearly totally. The lead is recycled from old batteries into new batteries. That's sustainable in my book. It's efficient in my book. You just need to make sure that as you replace batteries that you dispose of them with a firm that does recycle them. Usually your source of the batteries has a channel for this already.
Inso far as no waste, how? Computers are generally pretty fragile, they come packed in lots of boxes. You can conserve crates and things like that, but there's only so much box space you can use. In those cases, recycling is also the best option. It certainly wouldn't be terribly fiscally prudent to ship a shipping case to your clients for them to ship their servers to you in. Also, what to do with EOL'd hardware? It's gotta go somewhere. Recycle again for the metals and such.
__________________
CNN Internet Technologies
Data Center Manager
Fortunately, we are not limited to solar power, biodeisel or wind power as 'green' alternatives to generators. Check out what Capstone has done with micro turbines: http://www.microturbine.com/prodsol/index.asp
These technologies represent greener alternatives to standby generators and batteries. All are vastly cleaner than diesel generators or lead acid batteries.
Rmgill is correct that battery recycling has come a long way. Unfortunately, the demand for batteries keeps increasing. More batteries must be continually added to the worldwide supply. The manufacture of new batteries damages the environment in dozens of ways. (Ever seen a Pb mine?). The recycling process for lead and acid is also filthy. This results in a ‘net effect’ of battery use being negative for the environment.
Not to mention the fact that batteries are really not that reliable. Batteries are by far the most likely point of failure in any UPS system. Also, maintenance costs are high and their expected life span is relatively short.
When facilities seek ‘green building’ status or LEED certification one of the criteria used is the quantity of hazardous materials used in construction. A big pile of lead and acid is a big strike against certification.
green/sustainable Data-Center, how?
