International. The data centers, brains, and beating hearts of the Internet consume vast amounts of energy. Power to supply power to the servers, but also to cool the server rooms and remove the huge amounts of heat they generate. It is estimated that 10% of all electricity is used within the IT ecosystem. This makes reducing the climate impact of digitalization a high priority.
In response to the exponential growth in data center power consumption, Danfoss decided to build data centers that will be an example for future climate-friendly designs. Danfoss says it has the technologies to cool data centers in a greener way, to reduce energy consumption within them, and to reuse excess heat for other applications.
"We cool our data centers in an energy-efficient manner and recover and reuse excess heat produced within the data centers. This is what we consider green digitization," says Danfoss Group IT Senior Vice President and CIO Sune T. Baastrup.
Data centers such as power plants
Technologies include chillers and heat pumps with Danfoss Turbocor technology that allow data centers to cool up to 30% more efficiently and recover excess heat generated by data centers.
Decarbonizing data centers starts from the cooling side. Danfoss technologies are also optimized for operating conditions at higher temperatures to allow for less need for cooling, thus naturally reducing the energy consumption used for cooling.
In addition, Danfoss has innovative solutions for heat recovery. Excess heat is generated by server equipment as part of the operation of the data center and discharged into the atmosphere. Using this excess heat for use in heating applications, rather than allowing it to escape, represents a great opportunity for the company to provide a green solution that will help the company achieve full global decarbonization by 2030.
The decarbonisation of Danfoss
An example of this concept is Danfoss' headquarters in Nordborg, Denmark. In 2015, it was heated 100% with fossil fuels. By 2022, it will be CO2-neutral, and by 2024, excess reused heat from Danfoss data centers will provide 25% of the total heat supply for the 250,000 square meters of factories and offices.
Location plays a key factor in optimally using excess heat. The data center will be close to the location of the data usage and where the local area can benefit from excess heat. This provides the opportunity to use oil-free heat pump systems to transform the data center into a heat source. Excess heat from the data center can be distributed to a local neighborhood, helping to reduce data center energy costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"The data centers of the future will be hybrid data centers where we combine the best of two worlds: the cloud and the on-site data center. And we use the excess heat in the power grids close to where it is produced," says Sune T. Baastrup, CIO of Danfoss.
Danfoss is consolidating 20 global data centers and 135 server rooms into a handful of data centers, which will be built using green brand technologies.
"We put words into action. We have managed to build our own climate-friendly data centers, effectively in less than half a year. We want to show that digital transformation and green transition go hand in hand," says Sune T. Baastrup.
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