New Global Market Insights Inc. research predicts the Data Center Cooling Market will grow to $20 billion by 2024 due to rising power, storage, and efficiency demands.
Our international economy relies heavily on data centers as an infrastructure, but the current technology is a bit behind. Advancements would mean a decrease in risk of data loss, overheating, fires, and an overall increase in energy efficiency.
Hot or cold aisle containment systems are used, or being considered by, 80% of data centers, assisting with both energy efficiency and server safety.
As new developments are made in the industry, we’re sure to see further adoption of these cooling technologies. The trajectory for green data centers that utilize renewable energy is optimistic as the cooling market moves toward containment systems and other environmentally friendly innovations.
That said, data centers have a power density over 100 times more than a large commercial office building. An average data center would take nine Walmarts to match its power output.
Because servers use so much electricity, server farms also generate massive amounts of heat. Further energy is required to cool down these buildings to a safe level, which is why some of the world’s top tech firms are investing heavily in data center cooling technology and green server centers.
For instance, Amazon has taken up the task of repurposing waste heat from a large data center in Seattle to heat their headquarters. Of 11 megawatts of heat wasted each day, Amazon will be able to recover five.
Ash Awad, chief marketing officer for the consulting firm that designed and built the system, tells Seattle Times, “This is the first really large high-rise project that has been able to take advantage of this amount of waste heat, the first of its kind.”
Though the idea of heat recovery has existed for a long time, this is indeed a first. Other ideas for more efficient data center cooling include placing servers in low-earth orbit or under the sea to take advantage of lower temperatures.