データセンタ電力利用効率を向上する外気冷房技術の検証

摘要

ICTプラットフォームの根幹をなすデータセンタの需要は世界規模で急速に拡大しており，データセンタ全体の電力消費量増大が課題となっている。特に総電力の約3割を占める空調電力の削減が重要な鍵である。そこで本報告では，空調電力削減によるデータセンタ電力利用効率の向上を目的に，外気を直接サーバ室の冷房に利用する外気冷房方式について，その省電力性および外気導入時の環境腐食性を実稼働中のデータセンタにて実検証した結果，ならびに，電力利用効率指標(PUE)の試算結果について報告をする。%The ICT industry is seeing a growing need for services to construct next-generation data centers to obtain a competitive advantage. In order to increase the value of data centers to the customer, cost-effective and high performance data centers need to be designed, especially for cloud computing businesses that manage huge amount of real data. Therefore, the requirements to reduce the total energy consumption of data centers are increasing. One approach to minimize the energy consumption for air-conditioning in data centers is the air-side free cooling system. This cooling technology saves energy by using outside air. In the winter, for example, outside air is mixed with return air and humidified for use as supply air to cool ICT equipment. No chilling operation is required during this period, so the running costs for cooling ICT equipment can be reduced. At the Hitachi data center in Yokohama, experiments on air-side free cooling technology have been carried out since October 2010. In this paper, we introduce the experimental results on the power saved by improving the power usage effectiveness (PUE) and reducing the corrosion of ICT equipment with air-side free cooling.