Environment agency planning study to boost energy efficiency
Grace Chua, Straits Times 18 Dec 09;
AS INFORMATION technology (IT) and Internet applications grow, so do data centres - the energy-hungry ser-ver farms that host companies' computer networking equipment and applications.
How much energy they consume, and how to set benchmarks for their efficiency - these are issues that interest the National Environment Agency (NEA), which is calling a tender for a study.
The study will 'guide and facilitate the development of standards, policies and programmes to improve the energy efficiency of data centres in Singapore', and help the operators and owners of these centres reduce their environmental impact, it said in the tender document. The document was released recently on the government tender website GeBIZ.
The study, which will last about nine months, will examine 20 data centres of different types and sizes, ranging from under 2,000 sq ft to more than 50,000 sq ft. It will also look at centres that use different IT and cooling equipment.
Carbon emissions from data centres do not get as much attention as emissions from shipping or air travel, but the typical data centre uses enough energy for 25,000 households, according to a study by consulting firm McKinsey.
An HDB flat with its lights on and appliances running typically uses less than two kilowatts of energy.
There are at least 15 commercial data centres of at least 10,000 sq ft each in Singapore which host other companies' servers and software. This does not include smaller banks of servers in companies' own offices.
A large, 50,000 sq ft centre can hold 2,000 racks, on which more than 90,000 servers are stacked.
As more businesses go online and use IT, they have seen their data needs go up.
For instance, semiconductor chip- maker Intel had 1,000 servers in 1996. Today, it has more than 100,000 ser-vers worldwide.
Mr Wong Ka Vin, managing director of ConnectedPlanet, a majority shareholder in Jurong Data Centre Development, said the energy use comes from the hardware - the servers themselves - and the cooling systems used to keep them from overheating.
Data centre operators can boost efficiency by monitoring server use and switching off the cooling systems when servers are not experiencing heavy traffic. Or they can arrange server racks to boost the flow of air around the room. More efficient technology also means each server can handle more connections on less power.
But energy efficiency can go only so far, Mr Wong said. 'Disruptive technology', such as processors that save energy and produce less heat, will have to take over in future, said.
Promoting green data centres and IT is a specific initiative in the national Sustainable Development Blueprint, which was announced in April.
Energy-efficiency standards already exist for buildings and appliances - for example, 80 per cent of new buildings must be Green Mark-certified by 2030.
Worldwide, countries have various laws and regulations on data centres. For instance, the United States is developing an Energy Star rating programme for data centres, while large businesses in the United Kingdom must report their carbon emissions starting next year.
Asked whether this study would lead to legislation of energy efficiency standards for data centres, an NEA spokesman said it was 'premature to jump to conclusions' at this point.
The agency has several initiatives for companies which want to save energy, such as grants for buying energy-efficient technologies and carrying out energy assessments.
'Introducing guidelines for energy- efficient data centres in Singapore will definitely make it even more compelling for companies which want to set up operations here and the region,' said Mr Clement Goh, Singapore managing director for Equinix, a data centre firm which has two such centres totalling about 260,000 sq ft and using about 12 megawatts of power at full load.
