Today, the digital era is witnessing an unprecedented rise in the use of data for everything from routine corporate operations to financial transactions. Data centers have become economic warehouses in the connected, digital world as life becomes more data-driven.
Many businesses and government agencies now rely on data centers to store crucial operational and proprietary assets in a centralized and secure digital environment. Additionally, the pandemic has fuelled a surge in digital operations. Globally, as more people work and study remotely and internet access gets better, there is an increasing demand for massive data centers.
Currently, there are more than 7,500 data centres accross the globe. According to Data Centre Magazine, from 2018 to 2019, the number of new data centres built increased by 21% annually, and this rise is predicted to continue in the future.
During their operation, data centers produce immense heat and utilize a lot of energy and power. Excessive heat and humidity can harm equipment and appliances, causing them to break down and stop functioning. Therefore, it is imperative to include advanced data center cooling systems in both retrofits and newly constructed data centers.
To maintain consistent temperatures and humidity levels inside a data center facility, a variety of equipment, methods, techniques, systems, and procedures are used collectively as "data center cooling."
Several end-use industries, including IT and telecom, healthcare, banking, financial services, insurance (BFSI), and retail, use data center cooling systems. Over the years, telecom companies have invested heavily in cutting-edge technologies to increase network capacity, cut costs, improve adaptability, and impose new demands on data centers.
Hence, owing to the increasing number of data centers and government initiatives for energy-efficient data centers, the global data center cooling market is expected to grow significantly.
According to BIS Research, the global data center cooling market accounted for $17.82 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.99% and reach $44.52 billion by 2027.
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It is crucial to be informed about all the latest trends and innovations that have impacted modern data centers, given the data center industry's rapid improvements and dynamic character. The future of data centers will be shaped by several technological trends that have been listed in this article.
Key Trends Impacting the Data Center Cooling Systems
1. Utilization of Renewable Energies: The technologies used for data center cooling consume more than 30% of the energy in a data center. Therefore, the emphasis has been on research and innovation to help make these solutions environment-friendly, lower the data centers' overall dependence on power and figure out how to reduce data center carbon footprints.
A very important replacement for conventional energy sources is renewable energy. It not only aids in lowering carbon emissions but also creates power without burning any natural resources like coal, oil, or natural gas, making them carbon neutral. To reduce their carbon footprint and energy costs, a lot of information and communication technology (ICT) organizations have already started investing in renewable energy. As of 2021, these companies accounted for about half of all corporate renewable procurement worldwide.
For instance, Facebook stated in its 2020 sustainability report that it used 7.17 million megawatt-hours of electricity overall, of which 6.966 million megawatt hours were used for data centers, and the remaining amount was used for its offices. In 2019, the company used 1.83 million megawatt hours of energy, a 39% increase. Facebook maintains that despite a large rise in energy consumption, all of its electricity now originates from renewable sources.
By 2025, 75% of the data center's power will come from renewable sources, with a target of 100% by December 2030, according to the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact.
2. AI-Assisted Automatic Cooling Control: Artificial intelligence (AI) is a smart technology that is utilized in data center operations to help with automatic facility cooling control. Every five minutes, the system gathers data points from sensors. AI algorithms make predictions about how certain action combinations may affect energy usage, either favorably or unfavorably.
As AI improves the systems used for responsible temperature control, less energy is required for cooling, which may be AI's biggest contribution to the data center. AI could also detect problems with cooling systems before they fail and result in expensive shutdowns. For instance, Google doesn't need to use people to keep its data centers cool.
3. Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) Optimization with Economic Cooling Solutions: The PUE standard gauges how efficiently a data center uses energy. Data centers that use air cooling spend a lot of money on ineffective cooling solutions. However, liquid-based data centers boost productivity and cut high operational costs. In terms of PUE, liquid cooling has lower operational expenses than air cooling.
Power distribution units (PDU) and rack expenditures are eliminated via liquid cooling, which also results in a 46% reduction in facility space. Additionally, liquid cooling is 1,200 times more effective than air cooling at removing heat from servers. Savings on both direct and indirect costs are produced by this efficiency.
Direct-to-chip cooling and other alternatives like rear door heat exchangers (RDHx) are less effective than liquid cooling. Compared to server fans that use air cooling, the total liquid cooling system uses less electricity.
Immersion cooling keeps servers colder without fans, resulting in further cost savings of 10% to 20% on power costs. As a result, immersion cooling lowers operating costs since it is more effective than air cooling. Liquid cooling methods may achieve PUE < 1.0; therefore, they are widely used in developing data center cooling solutions. As a result, among all cooling technologies, developing cooling technologies that lower operational costs in data centers will exhibit the highest compound average growth rate.
Conclusion
Data center cooling is anticipated to be the ultimate solution for the rising heat generation brought on by the growing need for data storage. Applications for data centers, blockchain, and high-performance computing benefit from these cooling services and technology. The worldwide data center cooling market is anticipated to expand between 2022 and 2027.
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