Renewable Energy for the Data Center?

rohar asks: "The ISP/Carrier/Colo company I work for has just announced a new 'green' program. Although this is a step forward, they don't have a comprehensive environmental sustainability plan. I have been leading an open renewable energy project and I think we have 2 novel ideas for scalable and reliable renewable electrical power, the Solar Ammonia Absorption Convection Tower and the Compressed Air Wind Electrical Generation System. Do you have new ideas (Solar PV has been done, for example) for renewable power generation and conservation for the data center and other areas of industry?"

Comments

Use DC in the data center

[davidwr]

How much energy is lost by having AC-DC converters for battery backup only to convert it back to AC then back to DC in the server?

Put a single pair of load-sensitive, redundant power supplies on each rack and run DC to every device. One of these should have battery backup.

Yes, there will be a lot more wires but it will be a lot more efficient and have lower air-conditioning costs.

Speaking of air conditioning, if you can channel the heat to something useful, that's a plus.