The climate targets are ambitious, as is the growth in data centers. The world must become climate-neutral in a good 30 years. The company Cloud & Heat shows how the two can work together.

This week, we had the privilege of attending the inauguration ceremony of a new Cloud & Heat data center in Frankfurt. The concept is absolutely unique and shows what a future can look like in which ecology and digital growth are brought into harmony.

The growth of data centers is going through the roof 

Frankfurt is now not only world-famous as a banking location, but has also become one of Europe's digital hubs. All major cloud providers from Microsoft to Amazon have already opened large data centers in Frankfurt. Data center space currently amounts to 450,000 m² and is forecast to increase to 600,000 m² by 2020.

In terms of data traffic, Frankfurt is already the largest Internet hub in the world, ahead of Amsterdam and London. There are a total of 340 internet hubs worldwide, 165 in Europe and 80 in North America.

Data centers as an important part of the economy

At 120,000, the number of people directly employed in the data center industry in 2014 was already higher than the 105,000 employees in the aerospace industry. It is important to bear in mind that digitalization with self-driving cars and the Internet of Things has not even really begun.

Toyota assumes that the autonomous vehicles alone, which will be driving as part of tests and pilot projects in 2025, will exchange around 10 exabytes per month with each other and with the cloud. That will be around 10,000 times more than today.

In summary, this means that Data centers have long since ceased to be a marginal issue for our economy and will continue to gain in importance in the future.

The dark side of growth

As good as this growth can be for our economy, it is just as challenging for us as human beings. The power consumption of the data centers in Frankfurt already exceeds the power requirements of Frankfurt Airport. In Frankfurt, two billion euros are spent on energy alone.

The approximately 50,000 data centers in Germany consumed more than 11 billion kWh of electricity in 2016. With an average of 4150 kWh of electricity for a 4-person household, this corresponds to the consumption of 2.65 million households. With 9.9 million 4-person households in total, this is more than a quarter of all 4-person households in Germany.

Data centers consume as much electricity as 2.65 million 4-person households.

There is therefore a great need for innovative ideas in order not to slow down digital growth and still limit the ecological footprint.

Air cooling as the culprit

So how do you design the world's most energy-efficient data center and what does energy efficiency for data centers actually mean?

The current key figure is the PUE value (Power Usage Effectiveness Factor). It simply divides the total energy requirement of a data center within its boundaries by the energy requirement of the IT infrastructure itself.

A simplified example

If I need 400 kWh for the cooling of a server rack and 1000 kWh for the server rack itself, the PUE is 1.4. This results from 1400 kWh total energy requirement (1000 kWh for IT + 400 kWh for the rest) / 1000 kWh for the IT itself. Consequently, a PUE of 1.0 represents the perfect data center in terms of energy efficiency, as a value lower than one is not possible.

Servers are four times hotter than a hotplate

The above example already shows where the problem lies. Nowadays, air cooling is still standard, which leads to PUEs of 1.4. The servers are ventilated and the air is cooled down in a circuit by cooling systems.

If you reduce the surface area of a server to a hotplate, it is four times as large. It is therefore obvious that a lot of energy is required for cooling.

Cloud & Heat: World record with PUE value of 1.014

Water cooling as a secret weapon

What was understood decades ago at Porsche and in the automotive sector is still far from being understood in data centers. Water can absorb heat 3300 times better and conduct it 20 times better than air. It therefore makes sense to make use of these properties for cooling server blades. This is exactly what the company Megware from Dresden offers.

With a smart overall concept created by Cloud & Heat, this means a world record with a PUE value of 1.014.

Level 2: The next level of efficiency

The ingenious thing about the concept is that the heated water is used to heat buildings. In concrete terms, this can save €40,000 in heating costs per year at the data center in Frankfurt, as a hotel and restaurant in the same building are supplied with the waste heat from the servers. In terms of energy value, this corresponds to 150 low-energy houses.

PUE does not go far enough

The problem with the current measurement of energy efficiency is that the central parameter only takes into account energy that is generated within the data center. Further use of the energy outside the data center therefore makes no difference to traditional energy efficiency.

ERE as a new measure

A key figure is therefore needed that takes into account the reuse of energy. The ERE (Energy Reuse Effectiveness) is therefore the outdated figure mentioned above minus the reused energy. In a perfect world, this would be zero: all of the total energy is reused. At Cloud & Heat's data center in Frankfurt, this is currently a maximum of 0.621. This means that almost 40% of the energy generated is reused.

Cloud & Heat: The next energy revolution?

Is Cloud & Heat the new energy revolution in the data center sector? Our answer to this is very clear: YES. Yes, because the technology shows for the first time how it must work and, above all, how it can work. No, because as you can see from the figures in the section above, Cloud & Heat is an ant in the data center jungle.

Startups as a driver for change

However, it is important to note that start-ups do not necessarily change circumstances by becoming incredibly large themselves. It is to be hoped that every startup becomes as big as possible with its new values.

However, we know from our own experience that the more successful a startup becomes in its niche, the more likely it is that large players in the market will copy the concepts. This was no different with our specialized WordPress hosting, where many elements were copied by the big players 1.5 years after we entered the market.

We wish you every success!

Strictly speaking, the task of start-ups is therefore to show the big players how to do it properly and to become so relevant that others start to copy the concept. This is exactly what we wish for Cloud & Heat! From our side, we will test the system extensively to assess whether it can meet our high performance and scaling requirements.

What do you think? All well and good, but just a "nice to have"?

A key experience from our perspective as a provider: For most customers, the topic of energy efficiency or green electricity plays a very subordinate role.

If we look at how often we are asked about price in relation to ecology, it is certainly 1000:1. This is an incredible shame, as we are always guided by customer wishes and a ratio of 1000:50 would give the topic a completely different priority.

What do you think?

Hence the question to you: What do you think about this? Would you like your web host to be more energy-efficient or do other criteria play a more important role? Is it the host's responsibility to make an effort or should customers put more pressure on them?

Of course, I look forward to your comments on the topic - here or on Facebook - and an exciting discussion.