ST Engineering enters data centre cooling market with new technology that aims to achieve 20% in energy savings
Janice Lim
DEFENCE and engineering group ST Engineering is venturing into the data centre cooling market with the launch of a cooling technology that supposedly helps operators in tropical climates achieve 20 per cent in energy savings, which translates to about S$104 per kilowatt-hour of heat load every year.
Using a data centre with a power load of 20 MW as an example, a 20 per cent reduction in energy consumption translates to 14 gigawatt-hour of electricity savings annually — enough to power 3,200 4-room public housing flats over a year.
Assuming an electricity tariff rate of S$0.299 per kilowatt-hour, this could mean cost savings of up to S$4 million a year, said representatives of ST Engineering at the launch of the new cooling system on Wednesday (Jul 13).
In this scenario, carbon emissions are also reduced by 20 per cent, which is equivalent to 5,600 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually.
While ST Engineering did not wish to reveal the cost of a single module of the Airbitat DC cooling system, representatives said data centre operators would be able to recover their initial capital expenditure from incorporating the technology in 3 years.
According to Gareth Tang, head of urban environment solutions at ST Engineering, the cooling technology itself has been researched over the past 8 years and implemented in the market for the past 5 years for the cooling of factories and industrial spaces. This is the first time it will be used for data centres.
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Data centres are known to be highly energy-intensive as a lot of heat is generated by the servers and chillers are used to cool them.
The energy required to cool data centres is even higher in tropical countries like Singapore due to its hot and humid climate.
In Singapore, data centres account for about 7 per cent of total energy consumption, and this is expected to rise to 13 per cent by 2030. The cooling of data centres make up 40 per cent of energy consumption.
“The global digital transformation is accelerating and data centres are at the core of this digital transformation. Therefore, it is all the more important now, that we are to develop sustainable solutions for the future data centres,” said Tang.
For data centres with conventional cooling systems, heat generated by server racks in the data hall are channelled back to the computer room air handler (Crah), where chillers generate chilled water to cool the heat. The cooled air is then supplied back to the server racks.
Such systems are totally dependent on chillers, which are energy-intensive and generate large amounts of waste heat into the environment.
By combining the Airbitat DC cooling system with existing chillers, water is first cooled to about 26 deg C through the natural process of evaporation, with the help of fans.
This partially cooled water then enters a dual-coil Crah, where it pre-cools the heat from the data servers to about 29 deg C.
This pre-cooled air is further cooled to about 22 deg C, using chilled water produced by the chiller, and channelled back to the servers.
So while the chillers are still being used, Li Fuyun, head of sustainable cooling for urban solutions in ST Engineering, said the cooling technology reduces their heat load by about 40 per cent, without the use of compressors and refrigerants.
Li said the new cooling system would be able to reduce 7 per cent of urban heat island effect for tropical climates.
The technology is also designed for data centres in temperate climates, where the load on the chiller could be reduced by about 71 per cent, resulting in energy savings of about 43 per cent. The urban heat island effect could go down by 90 per cent, he added.
Li added that the cooling system has a life cycle of about 20 years, including maintenance.
Tang said the company would be looking to market this cooling system to data centres both in Singapore and overseas, and that they are already in discussions with some data centre operators.
While he declined to reveal which companies ST Engineering are in discussions with as it is still in the pilot stage, he said these operators have a local presence with a global footprint.
He also declined to share whether ST Engineering had any sales targets to meet.
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