Energy Intensive Data Centers Are Major Power Consumers

Recent reports concerning the amounts of electricity that goes into powering various businesses and industries show that, due to a boom in their number, data centers have to be held responsible for roughly 1% of the global energy requirements.

Interestingly enough, significant amounts of the electricity consumed by these date centers do not go into keeping the machinery up and running, but into making sure indoor temperatures do not exceed 20 – 22 degrees Celsius (68 - 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Naturally, keeping things cool for the working systems is usually done with the help of air conditioning units, which are well known for running up electricity bills.

However, a team of researchers working with the University of Toronto Scarborough now argue that, should those in charge of running these data centers agree to up indoor temperatures with at least 1 degree Celsius (33.8 degrees Fahrenheit), significant progress could be made in terms of cutting down on energy consumption.

Thus, these specialists claim that said increase in temperatures could translate into the center's requiring about 2-5% less energy.

It may not seem like much should one focus on just one such facility, but things start looking up should such measures be implemented on a global scale.

The researchers who came up with this advice also wished to emphasize the fact that this decision to tone down the use of air conditioning in data centers would not result in equipment failures or other such similar problems.

Bianca Schroeder, presently working as assistant professor of computer science with the University of Toronto Scarborough, made a case of how, “We see our results as strong evidence that most organizations could run their data centers hotter than they currently are without making significant sacrifices in system reliability.”

E! Science explains that the researchers came up with this recommendation after looking into various data provided by data centers run by Google, Los Alamos National Labs and the like.