As AI workloads become a priority in data centres everywhere, servers are becoming more densely packed together to deliver the performance needed to power anything from chatbots to data analytics.
In Southeast Asia, this presents a unique problem. The tropical weather in key cities such as Singapore and Indonesia means that data centres consume up to 10 per cent more energy to cool down the servers inside.
Like many fellow data centre operators, OVHcloud believes water-cooling is the solution, simply because water transfers heat better than air. In other words, cooling down the warm portions of a server with piped-in water is more efficient than cooling down entire server halls with air-conditioning.
Closed-loop water cooling has helped its data centre in Singapore keep the wastage of electricity and water low, says Terry Maiolo, vice-president and general manager for Asia-Pacific at OVHcloud.
This has helped the France-based operator lower PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) to an impressive 1.29 and keep WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness) at 0.30l/kWh, he tells Techgoondu, in this month’s Q&A.
NOTE: Responses have been edited for brevity and style.
Q: Many data centres in Southeast Asia face a warm climate all year round that those in other regions do not. How much more energy is being used for cooling in this region?
A: It’s not just the heat but also the humidity that makes it particularly challenging. in Southeast Asia, cooling alone accounts for between 35 to 40 percent of energy consumption in data centres – up to 10 per cent more than the global average.
To make matters worse, many regional markets are still operating emerging data centres, relying on traditional air-cooling as opposed to the more efficient liquid cooling method.
In fact, the same research has revealed that over 95 per cent of data centres in the region still use air-cooling, despite its recognised higher energy expenditure than water-cooling.
Q: The AI boom means even more tightly packed data centres in future. How does that affect the cooling and energy needed, especially in Southeast Asia?
A: To start with, data centres are known for having a ravenous appetite for energy, consuming up to 50 times as much energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.
Now, with 73 per cent of AI workloads predicted to shift to the cloud by 2026, energy demands are set to soar due to the substantial increase in data generated and a surge in demand for computing power.
The computational and server density inherent in AI technologies are major contributors to the generation of heat within data centres.
As AI workloads require substantial processing power and storage capacity, the resulting heat output necessitates increased energy consumption to maintain optimal operating temperatures.
This will strain cooling systems, escalating energy consumption, and exacerbating overall data centre energy usage.
In fact, estimates suggest that the approximate range for the energy consumption of AI is 134 terawatt-hour of electricity each year. After all, as businesses scale its digital ambitions, even more data will need to be generated and stored, inevitably adding on to the already high energy consumption figures of data centres.
This presents an urgent opportunity for businesses to adopt more sustainable cloud practices. What the region needs are greener data centres that have the requisite power and scale to meet heightened compute needs, while also mitigating the carbon impact that comes with increasing reliance of emerging technologies.
Q: Many trials have been carried out to create more sustainable data centres for tropical countries. What has been the biggest stumbling block?
A: The biggest stumbling block for creating sustainable data centres in the region remains managing cooling systems to combat year-round elevated temperatures and humidity levels while also balancing resource constraints in doing so, particularly, water.
To address temperature and humidity concerns here, data centre operators are increasingly looking to water-cooling technology. Yet, not all water-cooling systems are made equally – if overly reliant on evaporation for heat rejection, this will result in substantial water consumption.
Research indicates that a 1-megawatt data centre employing traditional cooling methods consumes approximately 25 million litres of water annually.
Overcoming this to optimise water usage in cooling data centres will be critical for data centre operators to truly build more sustainable data centres here.
Thankfully, this need not be a roadblock at all with the right technology. As an example, OVHcloud’s latest data centre in Singapore incorporates our proprietary water-cooling technology that we have been refining and using at scale for over two decades.
Our technology utilises less than one glass of water per server in a closed loop that is circulated, cooled and re-used. More importantly, this eliminates the need for traditional air-conditioning that wastefully cools the air in the entire room.
This enables us to significantly enhance the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of our data centres, translating to not only lower costs for both our customers and ourselves, but also a smaller environmental footprint.
Through our advancements and technology, OVHcloud reaches best-in-class sustainability metrics with a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) at 1.29 and a WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness) of 0.30l/kWh.
Furthermore, by manufacturing our own servers which are later disassembled and recycled for a second life, our integrated industrial model and circular approach lets us control our value chain and optimise components’ lifespan, with a CUE (Carbon Usage Effectiveness) at 0.18.
Q: From piping in renewable energy sourced across borders to exploring hydrogen fuel cells, which future technologies hold the most promise for Southeast Asia when it comes to sustainable data centre growth?
A: It is certainly promising that renewable energy and hydrogen fuel cells can reduce energy usage in data centres. This will be an important change in the data centre market in years to come.
However, the reality is that hydrogen fuel cells are still in the nascent stages of development for large-scale use while there is a growing and pressing need to reduce energy emissions immediately.
Based on current projections, we are already lagging behind on net-zero targets globally and cannot afford to keep up with the current rate of emissions.
Ramping up efforts to rapidly cut emission levels will be then especially crucial for Southeast Asia – a region heavily reliant on fossil fuels – given that its demand for energy is expected to triple by 2050.
In the immediate term, data centres can begin by focusing on optimising their cooling systems with technology that is already readily available.
One such method is water-cooling, which can significantly reduce water and electricity consumption, translating to a reduced impact on the environment. Data centres utilising water-cooling can achieve up to 18.1 per cent reduction in facility power consumption.
The good news is that we are already seeing markets like Thailand take a step forward, with others like Vietnam announcing plans to follow in the coming years.
This will be a shift that is expected to create a transformative impact on energy usage by data centres in the region, given the existing heavy reliance on the more energy-intensive air-cooling method.
