 |
IBM Solar Power Data Center.
The biggest drain on data centers is power. Electricity serves servers and storage systems. When the system starts to heat up, air conditioning power is needed to cool the system.
In the Internet age, data centers consume 1 to 2 MW of electricity. However, the consumption of 20 MW of electricity is common nowadays, and consumption is expected to increase 10 times in the next few years. The power consumption of data centers is a heavy burden on the power grid for many countries.
Not surprisingly, the emergence of a large number of innovations in the semiconductor industry will lead us to find the answer to the problem of reduced power consumption in computer systems. The actual power consumption of the IBM India Software Lab in Bangalore is enough to prove this. The research office has developed a data center system that runs on solar power. This system may be the world's first commercially available data center solar system.
“In the field of information technology, no one company has yet efficiently used solar energy. We have already developed a solar energy system. This clean, reliable, and efficient energy source can provide power support for high-energy-consuming and large-scale electronics industries.†IBM Systems Said Rod Adkins, Vice President of Technology R&D Center.
The research and development room in Bangalore is the first station to use this solar system. A 6,000-square-foot solar array was installed on the R&D roof. According to Kota Murali, IBM's chief scientist, the installed array can provide 50 kW of electricity in 330 days, with an average of five hours of electricity a day. The advantage of solar power is that it can directly provide direct current, while the power grid delivers alternating current.
Usually, the processor uses direct current, and if it uses the grid, it needs to convert the alternating current into direct current before use. In the conversion process, 13% of power will be lost. But when you convert one type of DC power into another type of DC power, only 4% of power is lost, which is equivalent to a savings of 10%.
Adkins said that in a developed market, this kind of solar energy system can save 10% of the electricity, so it will perform better in emerging markets, because there are many places in the emerging market even there is no or lack of grid power supply. Kota Murali said that in Bangalore, electricity is cut off every 3 to 6 hours a day and users have to use diesel generators to generate electricity. "The cost of electricity generated per unit of diesel is actually higher than solar power," Adkins said.
Innovations by Indian developers involved the integration of DC technology systems, water cooling systems and solar energy. The water cooling system is still a relatively new field, and water performs more efficiently than cooling in terms of cooling. He said that the history of the development of solar energy shows that when this technology is applied in a specific area, it will be a great success for the business community, just like the solar energy system that is currently used for future data centers. “The solar energy calculator produced by the first solar company in 1978 became popular in the market, and the solar energy system we developed was slightly larger than the calculator. It was the entire data center.†(Translation: Denise)
Fenghua Jade Motor Co., Ltd. , http://www.ywwjsl.com