GOING GREEN
The pace of change in how we produce and consume
data is accelerating. As our world becomes ever more
interconnected, we must adapt and plan for the needs of
tomorrow – as if it were yesterday if we want to keep up.
Another major change we face as a society is a shift to a
world driven by renewables in the face of climate change.
Mostly, these shifts are considered in isolation, but a more
coordinated approach reveals some useful intersections.
By Kevin Stickney, Managing
Director, Erda Energy
www.erdaenergy.com
Addressing data latency could
lessen the environmental
impact of data centres
No time for buffering
The premise of the classic cat video is changing, where once
we may have required a few milliseconds to buffer and then
be on our way, the cat now requires a constant, real-time
connection for us to interact with him and move through his
augmented reality space. Cats in virtual reality are perhaps a
fairly low priority in terms of ensuring seamless data upload
and download, yet the Internet of Things and emergency
services are not.
Latency, the measure of how long it takes to retrieve
data from a server, is a critical issue when autonomous
vehicles must make life-changing decisions instantly. It’s an
important one in lots of other applications too; nobody will
be interested in augmented reality if it can’t run as smoothly
as real life, or doesn’t meet our visual quality requirements.
The distance between user and server is a key factor in
determining the level of latency: roughly 1 millisecond is
added for every 60 miles the data must travel. To reduce
latency and support the changing needs of data we must
bring data centres closer to their users. In the past, many
data centres were located in remote areas, where real estate
is cheaper, and the power grid less strained, but recent
technological developments open up new opportunities to
create synergies between data centres and the communities
in which they serve. This brings us neatly onto district
energy, heating and cooling.
Why burn fossil fuels when we can capture energy?
District energy is a network of hot and cold water pipes that
can be used to heat and cool buildings, whether that be
businesses, homes, universities or shopping centres etc. In
more traditional set-ups, the thermal energy is produced by
boilers, combined heat and power or absorption chillers, all
of which rely on using vast amounts of energy to generate
heating and cooling. Yet, waste heat is all around us, seeping
out of everyday infrastructures such as sewers, electricity
substations, subways, buildings and EV charging stations
as well as being stored in the ground around us and water
sources including rivers. So, it doesn’t make sense to expend
lots of new, fossil fuel-based energy to generate heat when
we could just capture it instead.
www.networkseuropemagazine.com
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