INTELLIGENT GREEN TECHNOLOGY
fuel cells, rainwater capture, greywater use.
Some examples of local resource utilisation appear below:
Water recycling Several Equinix datacentres, including Rio de Janeiro, California’ s Silicon Valley, Sydney and Ashburn campus in Washington DC, use recycled rainwater and municipally supplied gray water for landscape irrigation and sometimes for datacentre cooling systems.
Thermal enhancement Equinix’ s datacentre in Silicon Valley incorporates techniques from refrigeration systems to significantly reduce the power needed to cool the colocation floor. The system uses direct expansion coils, lower fan power through air management approaches and an innovative evaporative condensing system that is more efficient than conventional air-cooled condensers.
Granular temperature control Equinix’ s datacentre in Singapore has been retrofitted with a granular temperature control system that has improved the facility’ s PUE by 15 %. Based on Singapore’ s results, this control system is now being installed at several other Equinix datacentres, including facilities in Chicago, Hong Kong, Silicon Valley, Sydney.
Solar power Solar photovoltaic systems have been installed at Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Singapore datacentres to supplement power from the local grid.
Green rooftops By covering roofs with plants and vegetation at Amsterdam and Zurich, Equinix lowered cooling costs and reduced storm water runoff, which is associated with flooding and nutrient pollution of nearby lakes and rivers.
Fuel cells The Frankfurt datacentre produces approximately 800,000 Kilowatt Hours of electricity annually through a controlled chemical reaction involving oxygen, hydrogen and water. The power and cooling capacity created by fuel cell system could reduce Frankfurt datacentre consumption of energy from the grid by 24 % and save about 150 metric tons of CO2 emissions each year.
Direct, indirect economisation Equinix datacentres around the world, have deployed air and fluid economisers to provide free cooling to colocation space, maintaining temperatures within acceptable ranges while lowering energy consumption. The economisation systems reduce or sometimes eliminate the need to run mechanical cooling systems, which contribute significantly to energy footprint of any datacentre. The types of economisers deployed by Equinix, direct or indirect, air or fluid, usually water or glycol, depend on local climate conditions and datacentre space constraints.
Aquifer thermal energy storage The ATES system at Equinix’ s Amsterdam datacentre uses cold groundwater to help chill air on the colocation floor, eliminating the need for traditional mechanical cooling. When temperatures rise above 18 degrees Celsius, the ATES system kicks in to keep equipment cool. At other times of the year, Amsterdam datacentre relies on free-air cooling. Excess heat generated by customer’ s IT equipment is also used to help warm nearby buildings.
Techniques that use technology adaptation across Equinix datacentres include:
• Aisle containment: Physical barriers are used to reduce mixing of cold air in datacentre supply aisles with hot air from exhaust aisles
• Energy efficient lighting: Datacentres use motion-activated controls to reduce energy consumption and heat from operating lights
• Adaptive control systems: Active airflow management using intelligent, distributed sensors and control policies
• Temperature control: It follows American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers thermal guidelines when developing facilities to optimise interior temperatures
• Variable frequency drives: This is used in chillers, pumps, fans, to save energy by reducing motor speed and power to match lower system loads
• Others: Mass air-cooling technology, high-efficiency mechanical equipment, water and air side economization, chiller optimization, high efficiency motor replacements, high efficiency uninterruptible power supply retrofits for existing datacentres
42 Issue 03 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS