Feasibility Study of Heat Pipe Ice Storage System Using NaturalEnergy for Large-Sized Data Center Cooling System

摘要

There is a need to find ways to reduce the power consumption of data centers which doubles almost every 5 years. In a data center, electrical capacity planning is required for different loads such as Critical loads (servers, routers, storage devices), uninterrupted power supply loads (UPS, battery charging), lighting loads, and cooling loads. Among the different loads identified, the cooling system is the biggest contributor to a data center's power consumption. If the power consumption due to cooling can be reduced, the overall power consumption can be reduced significantly. A feasibility study on the cooling of data centers using an ice storage system incorporating heat pipes has been conducted. This study is intended for data centers located in cold places where the ice storage system may be utilized. The principle behind the cooling system is to store cold energy during the winter and use that energy during the summer. A simple thermal modeling and an actual ice storage experiment data is presented.