Development of an energy analysis tool for data center free cooling technologies modelizzation and comparison in different climate conditions

Abstract

Data Centers are currently undergoing a great period of change. Developments in business and personal data transfer together with new technologies such as virtualisation and cloud computing are transforming Data centers into dynamic environments with greater power demands unexpectedly. The cooling requirements of the Data Center infrastructure form a large part of the overall power requirements and it is therefore critical to ensure correct optimisation to achieve the desired energy efficiency levels. In Planning data centers for the future, it is imperative that the design matches the infrastructure with greater scalability and integration enabling Data Centrers to evolve to cope with less power demands and lower running costs. This work brings together the main layouts of high efficiency IT cooling systems, highlighting their operation and efficiency in the case of an IT room with a thermal load of 1 MW and three different climatic scenarios. The efficiency of the systems is evaluated through a calculation routine in which all the components of each cooling system are modelled and the regulation logics of the software of these units are implemented. The climatic scenarios for 3 different locations (Palermo, Milan, and Frankfurt) are represented according to the hourly distribution of temperatures and humidity in order to evaluate the seasonal performance of each cooling system. The results give an overview of the consumption referred to each IT cooling technology in relation to the application climate. The calculation routine developed allows to choose the most suitable technology for the climate and the installation considered, also leaving the possibility of a subsequent optimization of the unit design based on the most appropriate technology.