The white data center project tested in Japan has achieved initial success
Meibei City, Hokkaido, located on the northern island of Japan, has been committed to the construction and operation of the white data center project, building a sustainable data center using the local snow. The experimental data center will use stored snow and ice for cooling in summer and waste heat from the data center for heating the greenhouse in winter. For the rest of the year, the data center uses indirect air intake cooling.
It snows heavily every winter in Meibei, and the snowfall even reaches 8 to 11 feet deep. Some people think that even in the hottest days of summer, it may snow. Some test data show that the outdoor snow pile 4 meters high, covered with 30 cm thick insulation, can still maintain a height of 2.5 meters in August, which is enough to meet the needs of data centers or thermostatic systems in summer.
White Data Center Project
Snow mound
The research team developed a system in which the winter snow is piled into a large snowdrift covered with insulating material. In summer, snow melts slowly, and cold water is used for air cooling of air conditioning system.
The white data center project was born. In 2014, the Japanese government's research and development organization New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) received a five-year research fund to study how to use ice and snow to cool data centers far away from urban areas.
In September 2015, a validation laboratory was put into operation: a data center with a single-layer steel frame was built, covering an area of 110.46 square meters, and 20 racks of IT equipment were deployed. The building is equipped with cold air intake and ice and snow cooling system. In addition, a food production validation laboratory has been built near the data center, including a 155.52 square meter greenhouse, a plant factory and an aquaculture facility.
In the half year after September last year, the data center used a heat exchanger system deployed in Snow Hills for cooling. The heat absorbed by the melting of ice and snow can keep the data center building at about 25 degrees Celsius without air-conditioning. In the cold winter season with the lowest temperature, the indirect air cooling system transmits the heat discharged by the server to the greenhouse, which can be kept at 15 ℃ only by using the server's residual heat.
The preliminary results of the white data center project are encouraging: the PUE value of the data center is 1.08 when ice and snow cooling is used in summer; In spring or autumn, the PUE value of the data center using indirect air cooling is 1.15, and the PUE value of greenhouse heating in winter is 1.02.
Compared with the traditional data center in Tokyo, the white data center significantly reduces the HVAC costs under the same scenario of 3000 racks. The research team estimated that white data centers would save about 80% of the cost compared with traditional data centers; Compared with the data center deploying centrifugal chillers, it saves 54% of the cost.
This testing center is located in Kongzhi Industrial Park in Meibei City, and the local government hopes that the unique way of ice and snow cooling can attract some companies to build large data centers here. The industrial park covers an area of 94 hectares (232 acres).
