It is fairly common knowledge that upwards of 6% of all the power consumed in the United States takes place in data centers. One of the most significant contributors to the power consumed in data centers has to do with the cooling solutions that have traditionally been applied. Many end users have operated with the mindset that the servers in the facilities need to receive 68 degree supply air. However, professional engineering organizations such as ASHRAE via TC 9.9 and other large end users have been instrumental in challenging this assumption. In fact, in the last three years the upper range of the recommended supply temperature for servers in data centers has been raised to 80.6.
As the recommend temperature has gone up this has opened up the opportunity for old cooling technologies to be applied in new ways. One of the energy efficient cooling solutions that has been being applied in data centers in the last few years is evaporative cooling. United Metal Products has actively been providing evaporative cooling solutions to the marketplace for 30+ years and has been working directly with data center clients in applying this technology for at least the last four years (installations go back even further than that). While the opportunity for significant OPEX savings is tremendous through applying evaporative cooling, it is important that end users also recognize the potential dangers in misapplying this technology. Some end users have rushed out of the gate and claimed to be “experts” in applying this cooling solution, only to find that their data centers are now facing expensive headaches that must be addressed. If your organization is considering taking advantage of the energy savings that evaporative cooling solutions can bring to your data centers and wants to avoid costly mistakes contact United Metal Products to see if the application makes sense.
In an effort to provide our clients with excellent engineering and the highest quality evaporative cooling solutions United Metal Products created “The Design Assist Program for the Application of Energy Efficient Cooling Solutions to Data Centers.” To learn more about how your organization can take advantage of evaporative cooling on their data centers without sacrificing reliability contact h.simmons@unitedmetal.com