IBM Takes University Data Centre Off The Grid

IBM is supporting a data centre at Syracuse University which it is touting as one of the world’s greenest thanks to the establishment of an on-site power generation system, liquid cooling and DC power

In a statement released this week, IBM and Syracuse said that the $12.4 million (£7.5m)12.4 , 12,000-square-foot facility is set to become fully operational in January and will use around 50 percent less energy than an equivalent sized facility according to IBM. The computer giant, which is backing the data centre to the tune of $5 million, is also planning to build a Green Data Centre Analysis and Design Centre in 2010 to help other organisations who want to create similar facilities.

“Together, IBM and Syracuse are tackling a significant problem — how to address the skyrocketing amount of energy used by today’s data centres, which is impacting businesses and institutions of all sizes,” said Vijay Lund, vice president for cross-IBM offerings in IBM’s Software Group. “We looked beyond conventional wisdom and addressed the broader issues of where and how to generate the electricity, how to cool the data centre and how to make the computers more effective and efficient. This unique end-to-end focus has resulted in a smarter, cost-effective, greener data centre.”

According to IBM, the typical data centre uses around 30 times more energy than a typical office building and the energy used by data centres is doubling every five years. “Improving data centre energy efficiency offers significa12.4 12.4 nt energy cost savings and environmental benefits to organisations and businesses,” IBM states.

The Syracuse University facility uses an on-site electrical “tri-generation” system which uses natural gas-fueled microturbines (below) to generate all the electricity for the centre and cooling for the computer servers, as well as using waste heat to warm buildings, according to IBM. The centre will be able to operate completely off-grid., the organisations claim.

Liquid cooling is also being used at the facility. “IBM and SU created a liquid cooling system that uses double-effect absorption chillers to convert the exhaust heat from the microturbines into chilled water to cool the data centre’s servers and the cooling needs of an adjacent building,” the organisations said. “Server racks incorporate “cooling doors” that use chilled water to remove heat from each rack more efficiently than conventional room-cooling methods. Sensors will monitor server temperatures and usage to tailor the amount of cooling delivered to each server — further improving efficiency.”

The centre also uses a direct current (DC) power system. “In a typical data centre, alternating current (AC) electricity is delivered by a central power plant through the local utility’s electric grid and then converted to DC to power the servers. This conversion process results in power loss. By directly generating DC power on site, transmission and conversion losses are eliminated.”

Earlier this year, the UK’s Met Office announced plans to use DC power to help improve the efficiency of its server infrastructure. “We take the power off the mains, put it through the UPS so it is goes to DC, convert it back to AC,step it up, step it down, move it around a bit, and then we take it down into the machines for the current required,” said Met Office IT chief Steve Foreman, speaking at the Green IT ’09 conference in London, in May.

Organisations are increasingly generating their own more efficient electricity, with BT planning a large windfarm project – unfortunately put into question by new carbon rules.