Climate- and technology-specific PUE and WUE estimations for U.S. data centers using a hybrid statistical and thermodynamics-based approach

Geospatial assessment of water footprints for hyperscale data centers in the United States

“…This analysis applies and extends the thermodynamics-based models developed in references [5,7,9] to characterize the PUE and WUE Site of hyperscale DCs in the U.S. Three commonly implemented cooling system configurations in hyperscale DCs were considered: (1) airside economizers integrated with direct evaporative cooling, using air-cooled chiller as the supplemental mechanical cooling system; (2) airside economizers integrated with direct evaporative cooling, using water-cooled chillers as the supplemental mechanical cooling system; and (3) waterside economizers utilizing the indirect evaporative cooling capability of cooling towers, using water-cooled chiller as the supplemental mechanical cooling system. For each cooling system configuration, the physics-based model can reliably predict PUE and WUE Site under uncertainty by utilizing DC facility system variables and climate data (including dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure) [5,7] However, the model's computational demands constrain the efficient exploration of the geospatial distribution of PUE and WUE Site for hyperscale DCs in the U.S. under various scenarios of climate and facility system operations.…”

“…PUE and WUE Site respectively represents a DC's onsite electricity and water use per kilowatt-hour of IT equipment electricity use, while WCF is defined as the freshwater consumption per kilowatt-hour of electricity used by the DC. These factors can vary significantly by geographical location due to the diverse climates and variations in power generation technology implementations across the U.S. [5][6][7][8].…”

Assessment of the Potential to use the Expelled Heat Energy from a Typical Data Centre in Ireland for Alternative Farming Methods

“…The temperature of the external environment is one of the key variables that drive the energy demand of the cooling system in a data centre [119]. By comparing the total energy consumption per unit area of Irish versus London based data centres (Tables 1 & 2), we can see that London data centres on average use 12.8% more energy per unit area.…”

The environmental impact of data-driven precision medicine initiatives

“…Less literature has explored the effects of digital technologies on water consumption and biodiversity, though some exists (for example, see (Ristic, Madani et al 2015, Mytton 2021, Lei and Masanet 2022). Data centres consume water indirectly through electricity generation (often thermoelectric power), and directly through cooling the ICT equipment which generates substantial heat (and subsequent loss through evaporation) of water.…”