Fujitsu Labs develops new method to cut data centre cooling costs

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed predictive technology for such metrics as temperature and humidity, enabling energy-saving operations of air-conditioning equipment in data centres. According to the lab, air-conditioning equipment can account for between 30% and 50% of total electricity use. 

Source: Fujitsu. Data centre layouts can be extremely dynamic, making it difficult to predict cooling needs.

By using a method called model-based control, which is used in blast furnaces, automobiles, and robotics to predict future values, air-conditioning energy consumption can be reduced, but it assumes that the layout of servers and cooling equipment is fixed. Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a method to create more accurate predictive models in real time based on sensor data combined with algorithms. 

In a simulation using actual 100-rack scale data, Fujitsu Labs has confirmed it is possible to predict the temperature of servers' air supply to within +/- 0.17oC and +/- 2.1oC, even in a frequently-changing environment. Fujitsu Laboratories applied these results to simulated conditions for a 1,000-rack data centre with servers that would consume about 70 million kWh/year, and air-conditioning that would use 22 million kWh/year, and calculated that, with the application of this technology, such a data centre could expect to save 4.5 million kWh in electricity consumption, a reduction of about 20%. 

Fujitsu Laboratories will be conducting field trials of this technology throughout fiscal 2016 at data centers operated by Fujitsu, after which it is scheduled to be put into actual operation in fiscal 2017, and incorporated into Fujitsu's operations management infrastructure software FUJITSU Software ServerView Infrastructure Manager.

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