Data Centres and Companies can Benefit from Innovative Green ICT Solutions

Four consortiums have been selected for the Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge Call-for-Collaboration (CFC) by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), to provide innovative Green ICT solutions for data centres.

The four consortiums are each led by Equinix Singapore Pte Ltd (partnering with Synapsense LLC, and Custom Mechanical Systems LLC), Toshiba Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (partnering with Nanyang Technological University), ClearManage Pte Ltd (partnering with AsiaSoft Pte Ltd, NEC Singapore and Nanyang Polytechnic), and 1-Net Singapore Pte Ltd (partnering with Envrocon Pte Ltd).

The Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge CFC was called by IDA to help improve energy efficiency in the data centre sector. The four consortiums were selected for their proposals based on the level of innovation and the degree of viability, achievability and practicality; as well as impact in terms of improvement in energy efficiency and projected cost savings.

They will pilot the implementation of their proposed solutions for a year, after which they will share their findings with the rest of the industry.
Equinix's "SG1 Cooling Energy Efficiency Project" will implement a real-time monitoring and control system to monitor the temperature and air pressure of the data centre wirelessly and optimise cooling at the different areas in the data centre. The existing computer room air-con (CRAC) units of the data centre will also be retrofitted with high efficiency variable-frequency drive fans to enable holistic control.

Toshiba's "Outside Air Cooling in Modular Data Centre" project will make use of outside air to cool the servers if it detects that the ambient air is cool enough to do so. The project will make use of high temperature servers housed in a modular data centre that is designed to isolate the hot and cold areas, thus enabling it to be more energy efficient.
ClearManage's "Data-Centre-in-the-Cloud" project will redesign the servers (including server board, power supply and UPS) to be more energy efficient. The project will also make use of server room containment technologies coupled with energy monitoring tools to ensure efficient use of energy.

1-Net's "Entomiz Ambient Cooling System" project is easily deployable and it is non-intrusive to the server hosting area of the data centre. The solution retrofits the existing air-cooled air-con and mechanical ventilation (ACVM) system with a fine misting spray to cool the ambient temperature. This will reduce the load of the ACVM system, and thus increase cooling efficiency.

At an industry sharing session today, the four consortiums demonstrated the cost and energy savings that can be attained through innovative and pioneering Green ICT solutions. These innovations can be leveraged upon to improve the energy efficiency of servers, network equipment and infrastructure, as well as optimise the overall efficiency of the DCs. These solutions are projected to save up to 35% of the existing energy usage in data centres.

News Source: http://www.ida.gov.sg/News%20and%20Events/20120426170048.aspx?getPagetype=20