2016 ASHRAE Winter Conference

ASHRAE is aiming for buildings to achieve net-zero energy use, including energy-intensive mission critical facilities, by the year 2030.  The design methods to achieve this goal are aiming to be in place in less than 5 years, by 2020. There is a need to ensure designers can choose the most beneficial options available.  Often data center heat is considered a bane, and water source energy recovery is not an option because the heat rejection and distribution is limited by physical, monetary and temperature aspects.  However, opportunities are becoming more available for new and existing facilities as data center densities and water cooling temperatures move steadily higher. This paper reviews the potential benefits of operating with higher water temperatures and finding means to couple alternative systems as heat sinks for modern data centers.

Data centers have an extensive range of complicated system design choices, which can often times seem overwhelming when deciding the best way to maximize the system design for reliability and energy efficiency. Is an air-side or water-side economizer system better, or should an indirect system be used over a wet-bulb economizer design? Is the industry moving away from raised floor designs to installing server cabinets directly on slab? High-level decisions can be complicated, but diving further into the details reveals even further trade-offs and directions in designs. Should containment be done on the cold-aisle or hot-aisle? Is it better to select units with EC fans or VFD equipped motors? The authors present a range of topics for debate in data center design and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each, applicability and limiting factors as well as encourage participation in discussions about highly contested topics in the data center industry. These debates are happening right now across designers and operators, end users and owners and produces a variety of viewpoints and engaging discussions on complex systems design.