Industry Insight

Expect data centres to come under renewed pressure as one of the highest energy users within organisations. And while data centre teams clearly want to deliver on their carbon obligations, that can be challenging when they don’t always have a clear understanding of how exactly their rooms are performing from a cooling, capacity and power perspective. Adrian Barker, Key Account Director at EkkoSense shares his views.

Organizations clearly want to deliver on their carbon obligations, but that can be challenging when data center operators don’t always have a clear understanding of how their rooms are performing from a cooling, capacity and power perspective.

Since it was first published in 2004, ASHRAE’s ‘Thermal Guidelines for Data Processing Environments’ has been a highly-regarded, vendor-neutral reference resource for data centre designers, operators and managers.

Following the recent inauguration of Joe Biden as US President and the decision for the USA to rejoin the Paris climate accord, there’s a renewed focus on broader initiatives to address the climate crisis.

New research analyzing the actual cooling performance within live data centers for many of the world’s leading brands suggests that data center operators are missing out on proven ways of cutting cooling energy consumption by up to 30%.

Already 2020 is looking like it’s going to be one of the top five hottest years on record, with temperatures easily matching last year’s summer heatwave highs.

In the year that Amsterdam claims to be Europe’s largest data centre hub, the city government has in effect put the brakes on the construction of new data centres – a decision that the Dutch Data Centre Association (DDA) questions given the importance of the digital and IT sector to the area.

With the temperature hitting 38.1C in the UK at the end of July, and records also falling across the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France (where Paris recorded a high of 42.6C), climate experts are talking of 40C temperatures becoming the new normal for European summers.