Every day we generate and use an enormous amount of data that must be stored online and this need is met with the installation all over the world of a growing number of increasingly articulated, complex and organized Data Centers. These structures are big energy eaters and dissipate the heat generated by computers and machines through cooling systems, whose efficiency can be monitored with the installation of a thermal energy measurement system consisting of ISOMAG MV800 and ISONRG MV311 by ISOIL Industria.
What are data centers and how widespread are they?
Data Centers, also called Data Processing Centers (CEDs), are physical places where large servers, processing machines, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and equipment for the centralized calculation, analysis and storage of data are housed to support company information systems.
The evolution of cloud services has led to an exponential growth of Data Centers in the world: there are 4,730 of them in all and the countries hosting at least one are 126; the United States is at the top of the ranking, followed by Great Britain, Germany, France, Australia and Italy is in the top ten with 78 Data Centers. Total global investment in these infrastructures more than doubled in 2021, from $ 24.4 billion in 2020 to $ 59.5 billion and growth is expected to continue in 2022.
The problem of heat and enormous energy consumption
The Data Centers are in operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the electronic equipment (computers and data storage units) placed inside them in “racks” generate a lot of heat, which must be dissipated by means of an adequate air or water cooling system.
Too high a temperature would in fact compromise the operation of the machines and damage the entire infrastructure and excessive cooling would also lead to problems, for example in terms of costs: 1° C of extra cooling would increase the annual costs of cooling energy up to 8.5%. According to the guidelines, the ideal environmental condition of Data Centers is a temperature between 18 and 27 ° C and a relative humidity between 20 and 80%.
The energy consumption for cooling is second only to that of IT equipment, accounting for up to 40% of the total energy requirement, and globally the annual electricity consumption of the cooling systems of the Data Centers is equal to 60 million MWh, huge amount considering that a single MW is able to power up to 1,000 homes.
The problem of energy efficiency of Data Processing Centers is increasingly the object of attention by companies that must meet high sustainability requirements and significant cost savings; improvements in environmental performance are made possible by accurate measurements and ISOIL Industria responds to this need with precise and reliable measurement technologies such as the MV800 ISOMAG converter and ISONRG MV 311.
The ISOMAG MV800 converter
In Data Centers, the use of water cooling systems is nowadays preferred over air systems: there is a growth rate of 25% of these systems.
These are more efficient for the simple fact that liquids conduct heat better than air, with an efficiency between 50 and 1,000 times higher.
To make liquid cooling systems more efficient, the measurement of the thermal power is very important and the MV800 system together with the MV311 provides precise and reliable measurements: it is an ultra-compact converter particularly suitable for systems with restricted spaces and for applications in environments with high humidity; it can be used for flow rate measurements on liquids with a minimum conductivity of 20 µS/cm and provides values with accuracy ± 0.5% v.l.; it is suitable for coupling to all ISOMAG sensors in the case of full passage sensors up to DN400; it is MID – MI001 and MI004 certified.
The MV800 + MV311 combination has been chosen by many Data Centers both in Italy and all over the world as it offers many advantages: ISOMAG sensors are certified to work without straight sections; MV311 can be powered via PoE (power over ethernet) and can supply power to the MV800 saving a point of power supply; thanks to the calculation speed of the MV311 it is possible to supply the monitoring systems with the signals necessary to make instant adjustments according to different parameters such as power, flow rate and temperature; the MV311 is able to calculate the power and thermal energy with precision even in the presence of glycol since it is possible to select the type and concentration, thus using the specific heat of the fluid in the energy calculation.
For any information on efficiency solutions and our tools, please do not hesitate to contact our specialists.