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Google's Chiller-Less Data Center
1sockchuck writes "Google has begun operating a data center in Belgium that has no chillers to support its cooling systems, which will improve energy efficiency but make weather forecasting a larger factor in its network management. With power use climbing, many data centers are using free cooling to reduce their reliance on power-hungry chillers. By foregoing chillers entirely, Google will need to reroute workloads if the weather in Belgium gets too warm. The facility also has its own water treatment plant so it doesn't need to use potable water from a local utility."
well, it might be unreliable, but i think you're overestimating the reliability of normal data centers. even if failure is twice as likely at this data center than others, i think it still improves overall performance and reliability enough that it's worth building. or at least google seems to think so.
weinersmith
You do not need a chiller to operate a datacenter in many environments at all. Based on the 2nd edition of ASHRAE's Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments (which was developed with direct input from the major server providers), you can run a datacenter at up to 90F. Seriously, 90F into the rack. When it comes out the back of the rack, you collect the heat exhaust at 100-110F. "Chilled" water at 81F is more than enough to knock that 110F down to 90F- ready to go back into the front of the rack.
The 81F water can be produced directly from open cooling towers (direct evaporation) whenever the wetbulb is lower than 76F (4 degree approach plus a 1F on your flat plate that isolates the datacenter loop from the open tower loop).
You designed an efficient datacenter, but you're five years behind cutting edge (not actually a bad thing for most critical environment clients). The next wave of datacenters will have PUEs of 1.2 or less and redefine the space from a noisy but cool space to hang out to a hot machine room with industrial heat exhaust design.
I actually just finished a chiller less 8MW schematic design and analysis for a bid. It was my second this month (the first was a cake walk - an extreme Twb of 67F, the second was west coast light conditions).
PS: Secondary pumps? Seriously? Unless you have to boost up to 25 psi to feed a Cray or some other HPC I thought everyone who cared had moved onto variable primary-only pumping. (Sorry, feeling a bit snarky after hitting a 40 hour week on Weds...)