The most important thing we have learned so far is “that it is too easy to simply say you are going to reuse heat from a data center for other purposes”. So says Kevin Burton, director at Parthenon Data Center BV in Holland.

The Dutch company plans to break ground in December when it launches a new facility that uses energy generated by the operation to heat adjacent greenhouses.

“You must have mechanisms and processes in place to account for the low-value nature of the heat and the fact that the data center is producing heat 24/7, 365 days a year, and that it is not always needed,” says Burton.

“We are using the residual heat from the greenhouses and have to get the temperature up. A by-product of the heat exchange is that we are left with a lot of chilled water. This means we can use the chilled water to re-cool the data center.

“Ninety per cent of the time we will run the data center on free air, and the 10 per cent of the time we are using chilled water, we are getting it for free. We anticipate a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of close to 1,” says Burton.



STORING HEAT
The exchanges make sense, but where does the heat go when it is not needed? It goes under ground.

Below the site is an aquifier which feeds a reservoir that will store the heat, losing, says Burton, just 1-1.5C degrees over a period of 12 months. Both hot and chilled water will be stored under ground.

The issue of raising the value of the heat has begun with plans to run the cold aisle inlet temperature at 27 degrees Centigrade.



Any higher, says Burton, and the server fans will begin to kick in, overcompensate and run faster, thus using more electrical energy and negating any benefits. “It is all about striking a balance,” says Burton.

“In the Netherlands we have had great assistance from the government. They are very proactive on green energy.

“We have had some subsidies in relation to energy saving, and we are looking at further subsidies the closer [we get] to the build. It has now been proven technically by leading engineers as well as theoretically,” he says.

THE PARTHENON ONE PLAN

10,000 m2 net customer space, with 4,200 racks; total site power: 55 MW; average 5,000 Watt/m2; eight data floors / phases; racks 3kW–20kW; carrier neutral; 24x7 security & support; lights-out operation; state of the art SLAs; carbon neutral operation; free air cooling, absorption cooling, heat reuse, heat/cold storage; PUE of better than 1.2 due to Symbiosis; construction starts Q1 2010 and operational as per December 2010.

EXPORT OPPORTUNITY
The project is being seen as an export opportunity by the Dutch and conversations have started with organisations as far afield as New Zealand about the reuse of data center heat for industries that are similar in scale and operation to those which are greenhouse-based.

The developer is now looking for an anchor tenant, saying that the project has spurred a great deal of interest among some of the major IT suppliers, including IBM, with which negotiations are ongoing.

DCD AMSTERDAM NOVEMBER 24TH 09: WILT U OOK UW DATACENTER EFFICIËNTER MAKEN?

De manier waarop datacenters zouden moeten worden ontworpen, gebouwd en beheerd is continu in verandering. Meer regulering, schaarste van middelen en het economische klimaat zijn factoren die zullen bijgedragen aan een verandering in de datacenter-strategie van menige organisatie. Op het vijfde jaarlijkse DatacenterDynamics Congres & Expo te Amsterdam zult u leren hoe het gestrande vermogen los te laten, meer te doen met minder en het juiste evenwicht te vinden tussen de productiviteit en de efficiëntie van uw datacenter

Related Event: DatacenterDynamics Amsterdam 24th November 2009