Green Data Centers and Water Cooling
Data Centers are known to consume a lot of energy. This is necessary to keep all the components buzzing and to provide the computing power that the world needs, but can be also a problem due to the high carbon footprint. The army of CPU’s running at all times also dissipates a lot of heat, which must be taken away from the delicate electronic components. This works in a similar way to the fan in your computer which blows away hot air from your laptop. Think of similar scenario but with thousands or tens of thousands of high performing computers installed in the same environment. The heat is immense.
This calls for a shift towards green data centers.
To deal with this problem of dissipated heat Data Centers come up with different cooling technologies to keep the environment cool and transfer away the excess heat. This involves use of hot/cold aisle arrangement, raised floors, pumped refrigerant or even efficient rack placement. The technologies keep improving, making the whole process better and more efficient.
One of the places where this problem has been solved efficiently is at the Green Mountain Data Centers in their DC1-Stavanger. This unique Data Center relies on water flowing under gravity to provide the cooling effect, thus benefiting from natural resource with a high specific heat capacity to provide the cooling. With water flowing under gravity, this cuts down the cost of pumping and makes cooling very efficient.
Masinga Green Data Center
This is the inspiration behind the Cloudoon MAS 101 (Masinga Green Data Center). Located along the 7 Forks hydro power stations in Kenya, the Data Center will be the Largest Green Data Center in Africa, as well as one of the most affordable. By relying on cheap hydro electric power, Cloudoon MAS101 will make it possible for people in the Eastern Africa region to enjoy affordable data center service, resulting in affordable cloud services.
The data Center will also offer low latency services, improving the user experience for people in the region. Read more about Cloudoon MAS101 here.
