• By Mr. Navin Andrade, General Manager – India, Data Center Dynamics India Private Limited
Data Centers (DC) are power hungry. Powering the servers, backups, storage and the cooling equipment all require huge amount of energy and on a consistent basis. While, in the past, most of the energy pumped in the data centers were non-renewable forms, data center operators are increasingly opening up to environment–friendly options. In a bid to reduce the carbon footprints, going green and choosing alternate sources of energy is the mantra being followed.
Popular alternate sources of energy
Once in the path of using renewable energy, data center operators are increasingly choosing the below mentioned alternate sources of energy.
Solar Energy : The photo voltaic cells trap and convert the solar energy into power that is used to feed the data centers. Being a natural source of energy that is available in abundance, solar energy is cost-effective and non-polluting. Two of Google’s new data center campuses in the Southeastern US are powered by Solar Energy.
Wind Energy : Large mass of open windy spaces are used to generate energy using wind turbines. For instance, Facebook’s Papillion Data Center runs on wind energy. Non-availability of huge windy lands is a key reason why this lags behind solar energy as a popular renewable choice.
Hydro Energy : This is one of the oldest ways of generating electricity by water movement on the turbines. The failure rate with respect to hydro energy is very low making it a favourable choice. Facebook’s data center at Lulea, Sweden is powered by Hydro Energy.
Government regulations on building green DCs / energy efficient DCs
Presently, Indian industry there are not any green standards collated with respect to green data centers. The India Green Building Council (IGBC) together with Uptime institute is collating green standards for data centers, which is expected to be ready in less than a year’s time.
Power to Harness Renewable Energy
While, we are talking about using renewable energy to power data centers, one should be well aware on whether India’s power infrastructure is robust enough to cope with the surge of hyper scale data centers. Well, India is no longer power starved, thanks to the government’s huge investments made in the renewable energy sector.
Today, virtually every node in the country has access to electricity. So, while harnessing power isn’t the problem, and costs are an advantage to the data center operator, the pain point lies in accessing it. The different Indian states have varied policies when it comes to renewable power generation and distribution. A standard policy in the offing will encourage more and more data center operators to opt the eco-friendly version.
Technologies that enable DCs to become more energy efficient
In addition to using renewable energy, a green data center is effective thanks to the implementation of some of the latest technologies. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) play a vital role. According to Gartner’s estimation, power will be around 15% of a data center operating expenditure by 2021. This thereby indicates that a significant chunk of supply has to be directed towards cooling of the data center.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is crucial for the success of any business that is data driven. AI when implemented can handle the many different tasks including optimization of server, saving the energy resources etc. For instance, Google teamed up with DeepMind, its London based artificial intelligence software subsidiary to curtail the energy spent on cooling.
Next is Augmented Reality (AR) that is using real-time data integrated with real-world objects. With ready access to the detailed real information, users can better communicate in a data center, owing to which maintenance can be done faster and at minimum costs.
Internet of Things (IoT) has a deep effect on the data center operations and operators as it connects the various remote assets that are present. These assets are joined with the data center through a data stream, enabling round the clock monitoring.
Companies focusing on building green DCs in India
India is a very exciting market for data centers. Most of the global cloud giants have leased facilities in India, with the country having presence of hyper scale data centers some of which are even 100 MW. Recently, Adani Enterprises Limited and Digital Realty have partnered to develop a green data center in India. Another company with the likes of clients including Saavn, imo, Uptrends and Lehren is RackBank, which has taken a conscious step of adopting carbon neutrality and building a data center with 100% renewable energy sources.
Reliance Industries along with Microsoft is gearing to provide data centre services to Small and Medium Enterprises. Additionally, realty major Hiranandani Group has announced Rs 14,000 crore investments in setting up data centres in India.
