Emerging Technologies
Despite the significant opportunities for improving data center energy efficiency using off-the-shelf technologies, there is a new generation of "emerging technologies" in the pipeline. Following are selected examples. See the Federal Energy Management Program's New Technologies site for more information.
- Power supplies — Power supplies convert high voltage AC power into the low voltage DC power needed by the circuitry found within servers, routers, hubs, switches, data storage units, and other electronic equipment used in data centers and commercial buildings. Typical server power supplies operate at roughly 65% to 75% efficiency, meaning that 25 to 35% of all the energy consumed by servers is wasted [chart] (converted to heat) within their power supplies. The technology exists [chart] to achieve efficiencies of 80% to 90% in conventional server power supplies.
- Direct DC power — Even greater efficiencies might be possible by systematically replacing the chain of AC power generation, AC-DC-AC uninterruptible power supplies, and AC-DC power supplies [chart] with a direct DC power system in data centers. Work is underway to categorize current server power supplies by type, characterize the energy savings opportunity, develop standardized efficiency testing protocols, measure efficiencies across a range of load conditions, and propose efficiency metrics that can employed by power supply buyers, manufacturers, and utilities to accelerate sales of efficient designs for use in data centers.
- Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) — Efficiency losses in a data center's UPS represent about 5% to 12% of all the energy consumed in data centers. Manufacturer specifications can differ widely from measured results because of differences in loading conditions and test procedures. There may also be differences between efficiencies measured under reference conditions and under "in-use" conditions in data centers. Work is underway to estimate how much energy could be saved by improving UPS efficiency, develop standardized efficiency testing protocols, measure the efficiencies of UPS's across a range of load conditions, and propose efficiency metrics for use by the marketplace in comparing units for purchase.
- Improved IT equipment — As servers and their components become more powerful, heat output has soared. This often creates a limit to the possible loading of data center racks, which imposes bounds on the productivity of the space [download]. For these reasons—and general interest in sustainability and energy efficiency—new generations of chips [download] are being developed (e.g. as announced by Sun in late 2005 [download]) that are twice as energy-efficient (and thus produce half as much waste heat) as their predecessors.
- Fundamental process change — In addition to a host of promising hardware "fixes", more fundamental innovations have been proposed, such as shifting all software to the server farms [download] (and away from desktop personal computers). While this would not save energy in the data center itself, it could reduce the overall demand by simplifying and reducing the power requirements of hundreds of millions of personal computers. It could also enable more people to telecommute.
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