Energy Conservation Measures for a Research Data Center in an Academic Campus

Simulation and experimental studies were conducted to investigate energy consumption, develop ECMs (Energy Conservation Measures), and analyze temperature increase under a power failure scenario for a research data center at Youngstown State University. Two ECMs were developed to improve energy consumption by analyzing the thermal performance of the data center: (1) increase the return temperature in air conditioning vents; (2) provide cold aisle containment with the set point temperature increase. A transient analysis was conducted under a cooling system failure scenario to predict the temperature variation over time. The results suggest that it takes 600 s to increase the server inlet temperature by 16.1 degrees C for the baseline model. In addition, in the ECM #2, the maximum temperature at the server inlet did not reach 40 degrees C under the air conditioning system failure scenario, which is the maximum operating temperature of the ASHRAE A3 envelop.