F E A T U R E

With the heat on for the data centre sector to deliver more powerful and sustainable facilities, Michael Tsielepi, Associate – Cost Management, Linesight, says liquid to chip presents an opportunity for a cooler future. urope’ s soaring

According to McKinsey, the region is expected to see demand for data centre capacity triple by 2030, forecasting growth of up to 35 gigawatts, from today’ s figure of 10 gigawatts. To accommodate this, data centres are seeing shifts in structural design due to increasing rack densities and heights. With racks now reaching up to three metres, this has significant knock-on effects throughout the building.

Door heights and lift capacities must be adjusted to accommodate taller and heavier equipment. Additionally, building services, such as ventilation and cable management, need to be redesigned to allow proper clearance.

Structural engineers must also account for greater rack weights to ensure the integrity of the building’ s load-bearing capacity, adding another layer of complexity.

There is also the mounting problem of managing the heat generated by these expanding data centres.

Keeping data centres cool is an energyintensive business. A cooling system can account for up to 40 % of a typical data centre’ s total energy consumption. Traditionally, operators have employed computer room air conditioning systems( CRACs) which, as the name suggests, rely on using air to dissipate heat from servers and other equipment.

Another method is the use of Fan Walls, where multiple fans are strategically arranged in a grid pattern to circulate air throughout the space.

While CRACs and Fan Walls are reliable, they use a lot of energy, since they not only cool the air in a data hall but circulate it as well. They also require a substantial amount of physical space

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