Google Data Center Uses No Chillers - Will It Soon Follow the Moon?

by George Spyros, New York City, USA on 07.17.09

A Google data center in Belgiumis taking a cool, new approach to keeping from over-heating on hotdays. The facility has no electricity-sucking chillers to support itscooling systems, relying instead on air from outside. Googleanticipates this so-called "free cooling" for all but about seven daysper year, but what's really fascinating is what happens when theweather gets hot.

Quest for Energy Efficiency Back-Story

Chillers used to refrigerate water to cool data centers require,no-duh, a large amount of electricity to operate. This has led to theapproach “free cooling:” air from outside the data center is used whenthe temperature is cool, while falling back on chillers on warmer days.Google's data center near Saint-Ghislain, Belgium completely eliminateschillers altogether. Bonus: an on-site water purification facility allows for the use of water from a nearby industrial canal rather than a municipal water utility.

So what happens on hot weather days?

Google will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers.

The end-game of this approach is what cloud technologists refer toas “Follow the Moon” energy management. Were large-scale networks suchas Google to implement this concept, workloads would be seamlesslyshifted between data centers to take advantage of lower costs for powerand cooling during overnight hours. Virtualized workloads would beshifted across data centers in different time zones to capture savingsfrom off-peak utility rates. Cool!

From www.treehugger.com, Forwarded by Remy Chevalier

Blessings

Dan