Google recently announced that its new Taiwan data center facility will use Thermal Storage as a key part of it’s cooling strategy. Said lee-Feng Chien, Managing Director, Google Taiwan.
“I’m also happy to be able to confirm that this will be one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly data centers in Asia,” Chien continued. “Part of this will come from our nighttime cooling and thermal energy storage system – not a revolutionary idea, but the first of its kind in our global data center fleet. But we’re also custom designing each element of the facility – adapting for the local environment some of the design features our engineers have developed and continue to innovate on in our data centers around the world that have enabled us to use 50% less energy than typical facilities.”
The key points coolingZONE would like to hightlight to our readers are:
- Thermal Energy Storage System
- Custom Designing Each Element
Thermal Energy Storage systems have been around for some time. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Construction Engineering Research Labratory, has a fact sheet on them based on the work they have done. You can check that fact sheet out here: Thermal Storage Cooling Fact Sheet
Basically, these system use electricity during off-peak hours to operate cooling plants that make and store ice or chilled water for use in the cooling of a data center the following day. They are a very efficient strategy.
The fact that Google has to custom design each element of their data centers comes as no surprise. Thermal management has to take into account many vectors of input from the ambient air, to the heat generated overall, junction temperatures, heat transfer, and so much more. But having to do so much custom work underscores the fact that off the shelf thermal solutions rarely solve anything. Instead, understand the thermal problem and then solving it leads to a specific solution that works most every time.
You can read the full article about Google and Thermal Storage at Data Center Knowledge here, “Google Embraces Thermal Storage in Taiwan”
