Cutting data centre cooling costs

Schneider Electric has launched the Ecoflair Indirect Air Economizer cooling solution, which uses a proprietary polymer heat exchanger technology to provide a cost-effective, highly energy efficient approach to data centre cooling.

Ecoflair addresses the persistent challenge of maintaining optimum operating temperatures in data centres while keeping energy consumption to a minimum. The new system can reduce operating costs by over 60% compared to legacy cooling approaches. This allows a greater proportion of data centre energy to be available for powering IT equipment, improving facility Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). In addition, the design removes cooling equipment from the data centre floor freeing up valuable white space.

“Modularity together with a proprietary polymer heat exchanger are key to the success of Ecoflair,” said John Nieman, Director of Product Management, Cooling Solutions at Schneider Electric. “Its tublar design prevents fouling that commonly happens with plate style heat exchangers. This minimizes maintenance and impact to performance over the life of the heat exchanger. In addition, the the polymer is corrosion-proof compared to other designs that use coated aluminium which corrodes when wet or exposed to the outdoor elements. The heat exchanger is also modular making it easily replaced, should it be required, minimizing downtime and inconvenience.”

Available in 250kW and 500kW modules, Ecoflair is designed to be flexible and offer greater customization according to the cooling requirement and local conditions, simplified installation and associated expenses, and increased serviceability together with lowered maintenance costs.

The scalable approach makes Ecoflair particularly suited for colocation facilities rated between 1 and 5MW (250kW modules) and large hyperscale or cloud data centres rated up to 40MW (500kW modules). The modularity also allows the cooling to grow at the same rate as power upgrades,according to the needs of the data centre as IT loads expand.

Indirect air economization can be deployed regardless of most environmental or climactic conditions pertaining to the data centre’s location – the technology is typically suitable for at least 80% of all global locations.

Such adaptability helps data centre owners to standardize the cooling architecture of their facilities around the world providing repeatable designs that speed deployment and reduce operational and maintenance costs.

Realising Cooling Efficiency and Reduced Costs

Ecoflair Indirect Air Economizers can reduce cooling operating costs by 60% compared with legacy systems based on chilled water or refrigerant technologies. Even when compared with other indirect air economiser systems, the overall efficiency of Ecoflair has been found to be better by between 15 and 20%.

This increased efficiency allows the customer a couple of options with the energy savings;

·         Increase the IT load with the same electrical infrastructure. In studies Schneider Electric has done that increase could be as much as 30% more IT with the same electrical infrastructure when compared to typical cooling topologies like Chilled water or DX based.

·         Reduction in overall CAPEX due to a smaller electrical infrastructure needed from a smaller electrical distribution and back-up power requirements. Schneider Electric indicates the CAPEX savings can be as much as 6% when using the Ecoflair product.

By way of comparison, a 1MW data centre based in London and using a traditional efficient chilled-water cooling system would operate at a PUE of 1.14 whereas the same facility using an Ecoflair system would reduce PUE to 1.039. This not only results in annual financial savings of ˆ88,000, but also greater efficiency and reduced carbon emissions which are increasingly important in today’s environmentally conscious world.