Saturday, January 31, 2009

Free Cooling in the Green Data Centre

We have recently installed a new Free Cooling air conditioning system for our primary Green Data Centre from Uniflair. This system uses chilled water which removes the need to run tradional compressers when the outside temperture is 8 degrees less than the data centre. We run our data centre at between 23-24 degrees celius so we get free cooling when the outside temperture is lower 15 degrees celius. This system went live in November 2008 and in the first three months the temperture hasn't risen above 15 degrees in the UK.

In total, free cooling reduces the energy consumption of a standardcooling system by 20 percent. Most of the savings comes from the chiller — with the chiller using 32 percent less energy than the chiller inthe case without free cooling. The dry coolers require 1.46 times as muchenergy in free cooling than in a standard cooling.

Video of the Freecooling system in operation in my data centre