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Data centres up focus on going green, but challenges remain
Data centres companies are increasing their focus on sustainability by innovating with design, creating ways to use renewable sources of energy, and making infrastructural changes to ensure better waste management, and efficient energy consumption.
Some like Bharti Airtel’s data centre business under Nxtra Digital for example are investing to develop proprietary efficient energy consumption solutions which can be adopted at scale across their data.
“We are investing in the development of energy efficient solutions for our data centres through SPVs (special purpose vehicles). This helps create solutions that are to our needs specifically, and gives us ownership in them, helping us scale them up across our DC sites as the need arises,” a company executive told ET.
Nxtra has identified areas like energy efficiency, water conservation and waste management as focal points for its sustainability initiatives at data centres. For example, it has set up sewage treatment plants at its newer sites, and it is contemplating retrofitting its existing sites with the same.
According to projections, the power consumption of data centers in India is expected to reach nearly 5 gigawatts over next six to seven making sustainability critical.
To be sure, the move towards green data centres is wrought with challenges with industry executives seeking some policy intervention to aid in the process, rather than depending on operators alone.
“To ensure the adoption of sustainable measures in data centers, it is essential to involve both state and central governments in the decision-making process, rather than relying solely on data center operators,” Piyush Somani, chairman and managing director, ESDS Software Solution, a cloud services and data centre firm said.
Other areas of concern include the cost of transporting energy since not all geographies are conducive to setting up data centres and have access to continuous supply of energy from renewable sources.
One of the most common initiatives currently is using renewable sources of energy wherever possible.
“Data centres commonly use solar and wind energy to power their operations by deploying their own renewable energy facilities, purchasing renewable energy credits, and entering into power purchase agreements with renewable energy providers,” Pravin C Rawool, associate vice president – Godrej Electricals & Electronics (MEP), Godrej & Boyce said.
While the degree of success varies, some companies have achieved 100% renewable energy use in their data centres, he added.
Apart from renewable energy sources, centres are adopting different ways to have more sustainable premises using different methods.
“New cooling technologies such as liquid cooling, immersive cooling, and evaporative cooling are leading to greater energy efficiency in data centres,” Piyush Somani, chairman and managing director, ESDS Software Solution, a cloud services and data centre firm said.
In addition to deploying sustainability measures at their sites, companies also have measures to assess the environmental impact of their data centres over time. These include systems such as BHMS (Battery Health Monitoring System), IBMS (Integrated Building Management System), and EMS (Energy Management System) are used.
PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) and other parameters related to air, water, carbon, temperature, etc. are some of the metrics used to measure the efficiency of data centres.
Data centres are also looking at making the best use of their environments to drive the green initiative. For example, Somani said, the location of the data centres also can be used to its advantage in that data centers located near rivers, seas, or water reservoirs are considering heat exchange with these bodies of water to improve their cooling efficiency.
Another solution that can be explored, said experts, is efficient storage devices which can not only store and process the ever-increasing data load, but also reduce the need for multiple servers.
“Using hard drive disks that would require fewer servers and use lower energy consumption to store the same amount of data. There is also less infrastructure and maintenance cost by eliminating the extra servers,” said Jaganathan Chelliah, senior director – marketing, India, Middle East and Africa, Western Digital.