Extreme Low Energy Server Cooling

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This feasibility study investigates a novel cooling solution to servers in datacentres, by reducing the energy demand. The growing ICT demand is outpacing technological developments in sustainable energy management for ICT systems. The energy usage of datacentres has a growth of roughly 11% per year over the last decade. However, around 33% of the energy consumption is due to the mechanical cooling provided by conventional convection fans, in order to cool the servers.Extreme Low Energy - Ele has previously developed a DC based infrastructure for operating desktop computers at very low energy levels, which have been used in African countries where energy grids are unreliable. The removal of AC/DC power supplies has delivered improved energy performance levels and has also removed a lot of heat created during the AC to DC conversion process. Together with Lancaster University, this study is intended to systematically assess the feasibility of an alternative air moving system using piezoelectric actuators replacing conventional fans for DC based server cooling. It will analyse the technology's potential in terms of cooling efficiency, costs and robustness.This feasibility study will develop new cooling systems for practical applications of server cooling using a combination of sophisticated modelling/simulation investigations, experimental testing and design. The focus will be on cooling by alternative air movers using piezoelectric actuators, combined with DC power solution for datacentres.