KyotoCooling has reached an agreement with national electricity utility Eskom to subsidise data centre investment costs for companies that deploy KyotoCooling's technology.
This is according to Hans Schreuders, KyotoCooling's business development director. “Eskom says that it will subsidise the investment costs for KyotoCooling by R5.2 million for every megawatt saved compared to conventional cooling of a data centre.”
He added that this has the potential to result in a 30% subsidisation of data centre investment costs. Schreuders indicated that Eskom's interest in KyotoCooling means that the maximum electricity demand from the national grid will be lower, because data centres will be consuming less power.
“This will allow Eskom to have more capacity available for other purposes.”
Eskom stated that it will publicise more details about the agreement next month.
Simpler, better
KyotoCooling CEO, Mees Lodder said the company currently does not have a channel partner network in place but indicated it will be providing the data centre manufacturing and maintenance directly to its customers.
According to Lodder, KyotoCooling has received much scepticism from the data centre industry because of the completely new way it is building data centres. Yet, he stands behind the conviction that simpler is better.
Efficient cooling
KyotoCooling took Dimension Data, Internet Solutions and MTN on a tour to visit live data centres as well as a test site in the Netherlands. The local service providers investigated how a data centre could be built more efficiently compared to a conventional water-cooled data centre.
During the demonstration at KyotoCooling's test site in Amersfoort, Schreuders demonstrated how an average heat load of 15KW per 19-inch rack can be cooled without any glitches.
Shreuders said, in general, data centres do not increase the power to more than 10KW per rack because higher heat loads will cause hotspots, which will result in overheating of server systems.
KyotoCooling tested 34 racks boosting the total power to more than 500KW and showing how the new method of cooling is more efficient than conventional forms.
Shreuders explained that conventional water-chilled cooling in SA on an average basis has a power usage effectiveness (PUE) for cooling of around 1.8.
He said the method of separating hot and cold air reduces the PUE for cooling to 1.2 or lower, depending on the location.
KyotoCooling calls itself the 'new Dutch windmill'. This is because it uses a six-metre diameter heat wheel in its cooling process.
The heat wheel, which is normally used in office buildings, separates outside and inside air and is an efficient mechanism to regulate temperature in the data centre.
The system works by taking in hot air from the server room and brings the air to the heat wheel, which is then cooled and cool air distributed back to the data centre. The heated wheel is then cooled with outside air to be ready for the next cooling process of the inside air.
Taking the initiative
The idea behind efficient cooling using ambient air instead of chilled water coolers stemmed from work Schreuders did with European telco KPN. The telco invested EUR1 million to begin research into this model of cooling.
KyotoCooling is a five-year-old Netherlands-headquartered manufacturer of data centre cooling solutions. It has deployed cooling units in the Netherlands, US, Canada, Lithuania, Russia and has received orders to install cooling units in Belgium, Germany, and Australia.
Next year, it plans to roll out installations in Moscow, Toronto, US, Germany and Netherlands, and hopes to deploy in SA as well.
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