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The TUCool Project - Low-cost, Energy-efficient Cooling for Conventional Data Centres

Authors:
Matthias Vodel
Marc Ritter

Keywords: air-conditioning; data centre; optimisation; energy-efficiency; adaptive; sensor fusion; control loop; control system

Abstract:
Air-conditioned cooling concepts still represent the usual cooling solution for thousands of mid-sized data centres. These data centres consists of different types of IT-infrastructure components, as well as different hardware generations. During the last decade, the optimisation regarding energy-efficiency for such central IT locations becomes one of the most important challenges. Green-IT improvements for existing data centres means an adaptive and safe parametrisation of the air-conditioning-system and its control mechanisms. But in order to handle these issues, the available amount of sensor data is critical. A large diversity of distributed sensor devices allows a more precise system management. In this context, the TU Chemnitz develops a cost-efficient and smart solution to improve the sensor knowledge base as well as the control mechanisms. We are using local sensor capabilities within the hardware components and combine these information with actual system loads to create an extended knowledge base, which also provides adaptive learning features. In a first research stage, we analyse the actual cooling environment and measure several operational scenarios for creating a detailed simulation model. The respective results demonstrates a huge optimisation potential. Accordingly, an optimised trade-off between power consumption and cooling capacity may result in significant cost savings.

Pages: 10 to 14

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: June 26, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-412X

ISBN: 978-1-61208-484-8

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from June 26, 2016 to June 30, 2016