Power Electronics Architectures for Extreme Efficiency Data Centers

随着数据中心与能源相关的运营成本已成为总拥有成本的主要部分，并且数据中心的电力需求是电网中增长最快的负荷之一，数据中心的能源使用正成为一个日益重要的问题。因此，今天的数据中心是全球碳排放的重要贡献者，使提高效率的数据中心的设计成为重要的社会需求。该项目的目标是通过电力电子和系统控制方面的创新来降低数据中心的电力转换损耗，以达到极高的效率。这项研究计划预计将对数据中心的经济和环境影响产生深远的影响。如果成功，根据2010年的保守数据和早期概念验证演示的初步实验结果，大规模采用建议的电力交付架构可以在美国数据中心节省44.4亿千瓦时的能源。这些能源节约反过来将减少有害排放，相当于从美国道路上减少85万辆汽车。研究将由本科生和研究生进行，他们将有机会发展广泛的研究和教育技能。这项研究将补充现有的教育努力，并将有助于加强社区外展计划。此外，教育活动包括为中学教师开发以电力和能源为重点的教育模块。这项研究将探索一种完全不同的电力交付架构，该架构专为服务器机架等多机器环境设计，并在体积节约和电源效率方面提供显著改进。拟议的电力转换架构利用了当今数据中心可用的大量服务器，并通过串联电连接服务器实现了极高的电力转换效率，类似于为太阳能光伏和电池应用开发的解决方案。严格的电压调节和运行要求将通过a)隔离、高效率、高功率密度差分电源转换器(将每个服务器的电压维持在规格范围内)、b)硬件电路(实现故障服务器的安全可靠隔离和热插拔)以及c)系统控制(实现高效率并处理单个服务器和服务器机架的启动和关闭)相结合来满足。该研究计划包括以下领域的主要研究内容：电源转换器拓扑结构；高密度开关电容电源转换器的设计、制造和测试；为确保安全可靠运行而开发的隔离和热插拔电路；用于提高轻载效率的双向滞后控制；以及针对现有解决方案的评估和基准测试。

Energy usage of data centers is becoming an increasingly important concern, as the energy-related operating costs of data centers have become a dominant part of the total cost of ownership, and their power demands represent some of the fastest growing loads on the electric grid. Consequently, data centers today are a significant contributor to global carbon emissions, making the design of data centers with improved efficiency an important societal need. The goal of this project is to reduce the power conversion losses in data centers through innovations in power electronics and system control, with the aim of extreme efficiency. This research program is expected to have far-reaching consequences for the economic and environmental impact of data centers. If successful, the large-scale adoption of the proposed power delivery architecture could save 4.44 billion kWh of energy in US data centers, based on conservative 2010 data and preliminary experimental results from an early proof-of-concept demonstration. These energy savings would in turn reduce harmful emissions equivalent to removing 850,000 cars from U.S. roads. Research will be conducted by undergraduate and graduate students who will be provided with opportunities to develop broad research and education skills. The research will complement existing educational efforts, and will help enhance community outreach programs. Additionally, educational activities include the development of power and energy focused educational modules for middle school teachers.This research will explore a radically different power delivery architecture that is designed specifically for multi-machine environments such as racks of servers, and provides significant improvement both in terms of volume savings and power efficiency. The proposed power conversion architecture exploits the large number of servers available in today's data centers, and achieves extreme power conversion efficiency by electrically connecting servers in series, similar to solutions developed for solar PV and battery applications. Stringent voltage regulation and operational requirements will be met through the combination of a) isolated, high-efficiency, high power density differential power converters that maintain each server voltage within specifications, b) hardware circuitry that enables safe and reliable isolation and hot-swapping of malfunctioning servers, and c) system control that achieves high efficiency, and which handles start-up and shutdown of individual servers and racks of servers. The research plan includes major research components in the areas of power converter topologies; design, fabrication, and testing of high density switched-capacitor power converters; development of isolation and hot-swapping circuitry for safe and reliable operation; bidirectional hysteresis control for improved light-load efficiency; and evaluation and benchmarking against existing solutions.