China's Green Data Center Plans

itwbennett writes "It's no surprise that China's internet-using population is growing fast. And so it's also no surprise that the country is planning to build new data centers by the dozen. What is surprising, at least to those of us who expect to read stories about widespread pollution in China, is that China is working with both The Green Grid and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop standards for energy performance."

Comments

No mystery here.

[Mannfred]

Energy performance is especially relevant when faced with high energy costs. From thegreengrid.org's press release: "The Green Grid will help promote the improvement of resource efficiency in business computing throughout China, a country with huge potential for energy efficiency increases."

Re:No mystery here.

[TheLink]

They've been getting low on coal every now and then - as in burning coal faster than they can get it (from their own mines and other places). They're using so much energy that they even run out of dirty energy, so they need to reduce consumption and also add clean energy.

http://news.theage.com.au/business/china-coal-shortage-to-continue-20080116-1m7u.html
http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/coal-shortage-causes-power-cuts-in-china-20101221-193d5.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/18/china-power-shortage-idUSL3E7FI1ED20110418
Consuming less energy = consuming less coal = fewer power cuts = fewer pissed off people = easier and more peaceful reign for those at the top.

IIRC Japan is many times more efficient in terms of productivity (goods, GDP etc) vs energy used. So there's actually quite a lot of room for improvement in terms of energy efficiency.

They've also been working on building lots of nuclear reactors. Hope they get those right though, or there'll be major disasters (China does get big quakes).

Going the right direction

[mcrbids]

From a regulatory standpoint, the most important thing isn't the effectiveness, it's the standards used to gauge effectiveness. If you want the right answer, you have to start by asking the right questions.

Is datacenter efficiency important? Doesn't appear to be so from where I sit. We host a significant number of servers in a local (Sacramento) colo, and we buy contracts for bandwidth and power. The charges we pay are rather small given the size of our company, the actual power costs are infinitesimal compared to the other costs that we have to do business. I care not a whit about power costs, given that our marginal costs are so low compared to the value we present.

Is it important? Sure! But in the USA, we have no operational standards for what constitutes "green" data center technologies. If there was an actual standard for DC power, I'd consider buying servers with DC power inputs, etc...

Re:Going the right direction

[Skapare]

You don't have to do DC to be reasonably green. DC still has a number of issues, including safety. And just having DC alone does not make it green (you have to do DC smartly).

Just being smart about AC as well as the cooling systems can make improvements. For example, run your servers on 208 or 240 volts instead of 120 volts. And if you are building a new data center in North America, get your power from the utility at three phase 416Y/240 volts instead of 208Y/120 volts for the computer room (get separate 208Y/120 volts for the offices where needs for 120 is common). Use lights-out platforming as much as you can (last one out turn out the lights).

Use UPSes that can switch to "line interactive mode" instead of doing everything in "double conversion". Only extremely sensitive equipment needs double conversion all the time Don't do "whole data center" UPSes because you lose the ability to gradually migrate to greener models over time. About one UPS per rack should be sufficient.

Split your cooling load across multiple systems so the temperature stays more stable (one giant HVAC causes temperatures to go up and down a lot). Once stable, you can target the temperature at a higher level.