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Cal Lahteenmaa , Technical Director , Asia Pacific , Vertiv
to manage and develop their own reliable renewable sources .
So what lessons can Australia ’ s positively bustling data center industry take from these developments ? The reality is renewable options will struggle to address 100 % of an enterprise ’ s data center needs . In the industry , renewables are often coined as ‘ unreliables ’, because of their intermittent nature – when these resources aren ’ t generating , electricity must be sourced from other means to avoid downtime .
According to 33 % of surveyed data center operators and IT professionals , one of the top three causes of data center downtime is power outages . This makes it extremely tough to solely rely on renewables , such as solar , hydro or wind . And so , just as the cloud technology is moving to a hybrid model , the power behind it should too .
Hybrid power can feed renewable energy into the grid , supplementing the plant ’ s carbon footprint and taking pressure off data centers ’ increasing foothold on the grid .
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THE REALITY IS RENEWABLE OPTIONS WILL STRUGGLE TO ADDRESS 100 % OF AN ENTERPRISE ’ S DATA CENTER NEEDS .
But these savings don ’ t come without their challenges . According to local data center procurement platform Cloudscene , there are 255 data center facilities and 687 service providers in Australia at the time of writing . These facilities have typically been designed with efficiency in mind , but the level to which depends on a number of factors including when they were built . Few were designed to accommodate a hybrid power setup .
The challenges of ageing data centers are pushing the rise in colocation development . But the key is to build energy efficiency into infrastructure design . According to the Energy Council Australia , intelligent data centers can reduce energy consumption by about 80 %.
This kind of innovation will also lower operating costs for data center providers , increasing value for the entire ecosystem . The economies of scale in a large data center mean that even though they are massive consumers , they ’ re still about as efficient as it gets in the world of IT infrastructure , the bedrock to all things technology . Hybrid power would simply build on that further .
But hybrid powered doesn ’ t need to be limited to large-scale metro data centers – increasingly , businesses are relying on smaller data centers located closer to their operations . These remote data centers can also be fitted with renewables and create further value through lower operational costs .
Even without taking into account the impacts of a global health crisis on digital consumption , IT professionals and data center operators have had to adapt to the growth in digital reliance and how that effects energy efficiency every year . Hybrid power offers a valuable solution . Now more than ever , we need to refocus our energies into giving renewables a leg-up in the data center industry . •
This method considers the critical nature of data centers working alongside the efficiencies of renewable energy .
Reductions in energy use and cost will vary depending on how much renewable energy is used . Typically speaking , whether it ’ s an enterprise , hyperscale or colocation data center , hybrid power can supplement efficiencies of up to 200 kilowatts per hour .
Robert Linsdell , Managing Director Australia and New Zealand , Vertiv www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO
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