Datacenter Energy Consumption

Datacenter Energy Consumption

    
When we discuss data center resource consumption, the focus is on electricity, which is an important component of the total operating costs, but electricity also has an impact on the environment, so it is worth thinking about the impact of water consumption on data centers and their environmental impact. It is not just about electricity; some say it is, and others argue that water consumption is just as important, if not more so, than electricity consumption. [Sources: 7, 18] 
    
Over the last 10 years, the total capacity required to operate the entire facility (the direct capacity required for calculation and storage) has declined, but infrastructure (electricity and cooling equipment) is still an important part of the overall operating costs of the data center. This is explained by the efficiency of the building and the amount of water used for cooling and heating. [Sources: 1, 5, 17] 
    
The PUE is the total amount of energy consumed by the computers in the data center system, plus the energy supplied to the computer systems. The Pue is the total energy consumption of data centers divided by the total number of computers and the amount and type of IT equipment that consumes energy, and is a measure of the total energy consumption of a data center. [Sources: 12, 13] 
    
Total energy consumption is the total amount of energy consumed by the equipment, infrastructure and facilities (WT) in the data center system. [Sources: 13] 
    
Based on data reported by IBM-managed data centers, which represents the total energy consumption of data centers in the United States and Canada, we calculate that an increased area of approximately 2.5 million square meters is available in a data center. Figure 4 covers macro trends related to energy consumption, energy efficiency and storage capacity of data centers. [Sources: 12, 15] 
    
It sounds a little crazy that Edge data centers, assuming a normal global economy would exceed the energy consumption of all other data centers, Koomey says, but the report continues to forecast that total energy consumption in the data centers of the US and Canada would triple over the next 10 years. If this claim is true, there must be much more than just increasing energy efficiency and storage capacity. Considering that the world's data centers have recently consumed 205 billion kWh, this must sound like a pretty big jump compared to a few years ago. [Sources: 2, 6, 10] 
    
On a global scale, data centers consume about one-third of the electricity produced on the planet. In this context, the global energy consumption of data centers over the last 10 years was slightly less than 1% of all energy consumed in the US and Canada, or about 1.5 billion kWh. [Sources: 18] 
    
Data centers worldwide grew by 550% over the same period, and 205 terawatt hours represented about 1.5% of the total energy consumption of all data centers. We found that the number of computing instances in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia increased by 6% between 2010 and 2015, while the number of computing instances increased 6.5-fold over the same period, according to data from the US Department of Energy. [Sources: 9, 11] 
    
The study, published last week in the journal Science, found that while energy consumption in data centers has increased in recent years, growth has been negligible compared to increased workloads and hardware use over time. A recent study by Greenpeace and the International Energy Agency (IEA), which compiled data on the energy consumption of the world's largest data center systems, found that energy consumption increased by only 6% between 2010 and 2018, roughly the amount of electricity that South Africa consumes. European data centers consumed 130 TWh in 2015, Greenpeace put the figure at 160 T Wh in 2018. The project showed a total energy consumption of 1.5 terawatt hours in Europe and Asia, about 1,000 times higher than the global average over the same period. [Sources: 4, 11, 14] 
    
The analysis provides evidence that we can expect in the near future that the energy consumption of data centers in Europe and Asia will be very manageable over the next five years. However, we are hopeful because we are facing the challenges of electricity supply, which will be doubled in data center capacity over the next five years. [Sources: 15, 17] 
    
With so many infrastructure components consuming electricity, managers need to address this to reduce the power consumption of data centers. In modern data centers, there are certainly ways to do this, but for people in the data center industry, the standard will be to minimise their energy consumption, and there is certainly a way to do this. It makes sense to improve efficiency across the board, because it reduces the power consumption of our data centers. Administrators should accurately identify the risks and seek support from the executive branch to pursue the following tactics to reduce our data center power consumption with a high-density, high-efficiency infrastructure that can thermally deploy data centers in seconds. [Sources: 1, 16, 18] 
    
According to the European Commission, data centers in Europe will consume 259 TWh of electricity by 2020, which represents an average of 1.5% of total electricity consumption in the EU, and this figure is likely to increase. Based on market growth and efficiency trends, this estimate puts the power consumption of the server data center at around 1,000 T Wh per year, or about 2.7%. In the United States, data centers consume about 2,500 twh of electricity annually, according to a recent report by the US Energy Information Administration. [Sources: 0, 3, 8] 
    

Sources:
    
[0]: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1372902
    
[1]: https://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/Four-ways-to-reduce-data-center-power-consumption
    
[2]: https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-really-use/
    
[3]: https://eepower.com/news/cooling-control-technology-to-substantially-reduce-datacenter-energy-consumption/
    
[4]: https://www.axios.com/study-data-centers-energy-52d13839-d697-4b55-b02b-65e9b332c3e2.html
    
[5]: https://www.42u.com/measurement/pue-dcie.htm
    
[6]: https://www.iceotope.com/lab/just-how-much-energy-will-edge-data-centers-consume/
    
[7]: https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2015/06/data-center-power-water-consumption/
    
[8]: https://datacenter.com/news_and_insight/datacenter_com-signs-eu-code-of-conduct-for-efficiency-in-data-centers-as-participlant/
    
[9]: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/coronavirus-stay-home-workstyle-and-cloud-energy-consumption
    
[10]: https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy/study-data-centers-responsible-1-percent-all-electricity-consumed-worldwide
    
[11]: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3531316/data-center-power-consumption-holds-steady.html
    
[12]: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/environment/climate/datacenter_energy.shtml
    
[13]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness
    
[14]: https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/data-center-energy-use-goes-up-and-up/
    
[15]: https://www.electronics-cooling.com/2019/05/thermal-facts-fairy-tales-whatever-happened-to-the-predicted-data-center-energy-consumption-apocalypse/
    
[16]: https://www.csemag.com/articles/what-ashrae-90-4-does-for-data-center-energy-efficiency/
    
[17]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/12/15/why-energy-is-a-big-and-rapidly-growing-problem-for-data-centers/
    
[18]: https://www.vxchnge.com/blog/growing-energy-demands-of-data-centers