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Serverfarm’s CEO, Avner Papouchado, featured in Greener Data: Actionable Insights from Industry Leaders.
In this book, JSA brings together 24 industry thought leaders representing every layer of our global critical network infrastructure, to answer how we can get our data greener today and together. Here’s an excerpt from our chapter. The book is available now here. Proceeds go to Direct Relief for Ukraine.
At Serverfarm, when it comes to sustainability, we don’t do elephants. That is, we don’t allow the big issues into the room and then keep them out of the conversation by pretending they are not there.
The time is now for an honest assessment by our collective data center sector of what we must do to provide the world with greener data. This requires a context; it means challenging some accepted truths in order to reduce, reuse, and recycle. And it calls for a change of thinking in some important areas.
The global context that will lead to the supply of greener data is the clean electrification of every industry. This requires a transition of the energy sector to net zero through complete decarbonization.
Reaching net zero by 2050 means breaking the link between all human activity and the use of hydrocarbons as fuel. It is the existential challenge of our age.
In short, everything we do as consumers and as businesses must become greener. Furthermore, we must also accept that where 100% green or carbon neutral is not immediately achievable, then there are vital steps to take to become green and clean wherever possible.
Step 1: Do a PPA, whether virtual or physical
Step 2: Build a microgrid with a combination of renewable power sources feeding storage devices
Step 3: Eliminate diesel generators – this may not have a major impact on carbon, but it will target emissions
Step 4: Develop designs that eliminate the use of water
Step 5: Implement a well-established and accepted accounting method that would signify carbon reductions are real
"Big tech companies with hyperscale data centers to run are among the biggest investors in PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements)."
What Is Happening with Green Power Inside and Around the Data Center?
Everybody talks about green data centers, but nobody knows exactly what that means. Let’s explore.
As in most industries, there are many shades of green. And there are shades of green that are, in fact, closer to shades of brown. The first and the most obvious step is to improve the data center efficiency. PUE (Power Utilization Effectiveness ) is the metric that quantifies the data center efficiency performance. Significant progress has been made over the years in improving the PUE from 2.0 to modern data centers operating today at 1.2, and, in some cases, even lower.
Offsetting is another tactic that data center operators have used to boost their green credentials. Offsetting is seen as a controversial method by some. Criticisms include overstating the positive impact of nature-based offsetting such as forestry projects for carbon produced today. Offsetting can also include investment in renewable energy generation. However, critics say even this does little to reduce carbon emissions at source.
More popular today are PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements). Under a PPA, companies acquire the output of a solar farm or wind farm or another renewable.
Big tech companies with hyperscale data centers to run are among the biggest investors in PPAs. The best PPAs involve direct physical connections between the renewable energy source and the data center. For this, the data center is physically located relatively close to solar or wind energy generation infrastructure so that all the energy generated goes into a grid that feeds that data center.
There are also virtual PPAs — these are more popular among data center operators. In places such as the United States, it is often easier to build a data center in, say, North Carolina and buy a wind power PPA in Iowa.
In essence, both types of PPA are closer to a real carbon reduction measure than offsetting. However, even with a physical connection, generating your own green power and feeding data centers directly is easier said than done.
It requires huge amounts of renewable generation, combined with vast storage capacity – such as batteries. In terms of a holistic view of renewables, the key is energy storage.
The available solar or wind generating capacity would need to be five times the capacity of the load required by the data center. This is because in order to be completely green, the renewable source must meet the power needs of the data center and, at the same time, charge the data center’s batteries for stored energy for when the sun doesn’t shine, or the wind isn’t blowing.
But even battery storage with hundreds of megawatts of capacity will only run a data center for a few hours. This compares with diesel generators which are currently widely in use, which can power data centers for 80+ hours. And, of course, running diesel generators is no one’s idea of green. Something must change.
Whether large energy storage systems are best at a data center or grid level (at grid level, it is known as BESS – Battery Energy Storage Systems) is being hotly debated. Wherever it lives, storage is the biggest thing that needs to be solved.
What is the cleanest technology for battery storage? Currently most batteries used in data centers are lithium-ion based. But it is likely that lithium-ion will be an interim technology for the scale of energy storage required in data centers. There is already huge amounts of research and development showing good progress in chemical batteries, flow batteries, liquid metal batteries, sodium glass batteries, and sodium-ion batteries. All of which are seen as superior to lithium-ion batteries in sustainability, performance and safety terms .
Alternative energy storage technologies that show promise include compressed air or CAES (Compressed Air Energy Storage), where the compressed air stored in underground cavities or in above-ground tanks is released to generate power using turbines, LAES (Liquid Air Energy Storage) and Pumped Hydro. Compressed air is among the most attractive solutions for data centers, and liquid air is gaining traction as a source of stored energy.
"Eventually, when green hydron becomes available, engines will be converted to run 100% hydrogen. That will be the trajectory of converting from natural gas."
Hydrogen — Smallest Element, Biggest Hope?
Beyond using renewable energy sources – which are asynchronous and not always available — the big hope for a carbon-free fuel of the future is, of course, the simplest and the most abundant element in the universe. With an atomic structure consisting of one proton and one electron and an atomic weight of 1.008, is hydrogen the solution to carbon-free future power?
While hydrogen as a fuel will undoubtedly impact the data center industry through either fuel cells or engine re-fits, the idea of powering something like a large data center on 100% hydrogen is a long way off. The use of hydrogen will most likely come in phases:
Phase one will be the use of fuel cells or natural gas reciprocating engines.
Phase two will be a hybrid dimension where hydrogen is injected into the natural gas pipeline at 20% – 30%, further reducing the carbon emitted from just burning natural gas. The same device, whether it is a fuel engine or fuel cell, can operate on natural gas or a mixture of natural gas and hydrogen or pure hydrogen.
Eventually, when green hydron becomes available, engines will be converted to run 100% hydrogen. That will be the trajectory of converting from natural gas.
A major factor is that to produce green hydrogen economically and sustainably requires virtually free power using excess capacity from wind and solar to conduct electrolysis (separate hydrogen from oxygen in water). This is expensive because the molecular bond in H2O is very strong and requires a lot of energy to break. And it requires a lot of electrolyzers.
A viable option is to extract the hydrogen from natural gas to capture and sequestrate the carbon dioxide produced in the reformation process.
And once all this green hydrogen becomes available, there are the problems of transport and storage. The first means building a pipeline (expensive) and the second means using compressed, liquid hydrogen, ammonia or solid hydrogen storage.
The next issue to address is how do we efficiently convert hydrogen into electricity. The conversion efficiency levels must be vastly improved from where they are today. When taking the whole cycle from renewable to end electricity, the overall efficiency is about 25% when all conversions and storage are factored in.
Instability From Stability and Back Again
There is no escaping the irony that the proliferation of renewable energy sources will have a negative impact on the reliability of the grid. If large chunks of coal or nuclear power generation are removed, this creates the need for additional “peaker” power plants that use natural gas. The solution is to have energy storage buffers that engage in these transitions.
The greener data opportunity extends to data centers playing a significant role, thereby providing this kind of storage through a demand response as well as frequency regulation, thus improving the overall grid reliability in addition to improving the data centers’ own reliability.
There is much to overcome, but that should not distract nor deter our efforts.
It is important to note that on the journey to net zero, the International Energy Agency says: “In 2050, almost half the carbon reductions [will] come from technologies that are currently only at the demonstration or prototype phase.”
With that in mind, here are some practical actions that data centers might consider as the first steps on the journey to greener data.
Step 1: Do a PPA, whether virtual or physical
Step 2: Build a microgrid with a combination of renewable power sources feeding storage devices
Step 3: Eliminate diesel generators – this may not have a major impact on carbon, but it will target emissions
Step 4: Develop designs that eliminate the use of water
Step 5: Implement a well-established and accepted accounting method that would signify carbon reductions are real
Read the full chapter plus additional insights in the book below.
In this book, JSA brings together 24 industry thought leaders representing every layer of our global critical network infrastructure, to answer how we can get our data greener today and together. Here’s an excerpt from our chapter. The book is available now
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