Energy consumption of data centers

The "TEMPRO" project focused on the entire life cycle of data centers

Using energy and raw materials more efficiently in data centers - this is the goal of the "Total Energy Management for Professional Data Centers" (TEMPRO) project, which was successfully completed in October 2019. Five commercial companies and three research partners spent three years researching the environmental impact of data centers in the project, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Together, new energy- and resource-saving technologies were identified, evaluated and developed as prototypes.

"The overall energy requirements of data centers are increasing significantly. The increasing digitalization of society and the economy requires more and more natural resources and energy," explains project manager Dr. Alexandra Pehlken, "We were able to calculate that the more than 50,000 data centers in Germany consumed 14 billion kWh of electricity in 2018. That's 2.7% of electricity consumption in Germany and almost 40% more than in 2010". Added to this is the so-called grey energy generated during the production and transport of the equipment and systems installed in the data centers. "In TEMPRO, we were able to estimate this grey energy for Germany for the first time...", says Pehlken, "We have thus created a basis for holistically assessing the environmental impact of data centers in the future".

In view of the global environmental situation, the energy and resource requirements of data centers, which are likely to continue to rise in the future, pose new challenges for companies and politicians. "Despite significant efficiency gains, the energy and resource requirements of data centers in Germany are expected to increase by more than 50% by 2030," explains Dr. Ralph Hintemann from the Borderstep Institute, "The economy and society are generating more and more data that needs to be transferred, processed and stored. This leads to more and more very large data centers". With new technologies such as autonomous driving, Industry 4.0 and the expansion of 5G mobile networks, more and more smaller edge data centers are also being built. Hintemann: "The energy-efficient construction and operation of edge data centers is a challenge. In 2030, edge data centers could be responsible for a third of the energy requirements of all data centers in Germany".

TEMPRO also provided concrete assistance, starting points and options for action to reduce the environmental impact of data centers. Among other things, software tools were developed to support energy and resource-conscious data center operation. With the ERBET initial assessment tool (https://www.tempro-energy.de/erbet/ ), which is now publicly available, data center operators can, for example, estimate and evaluate their overall energy requirements. More than 60 new energy- and resource-saving technologies were analyzed and evaluated in TEMPRO. The business partners BTC IT Services GmbH, dc-ce Berlin-Brandenburg and Zweckverband Kommunale Datenverarbeitung Oldenburg have developed prototypes of particularly promising technologies. "We were able to show that despite increasing digitalization, a trend reversal in the development of energy requirements for data centers is also possible in the future," says Pehlken. "If we succeed in making greater use of the technologies we have identified and developed, the overall energy requirements of data centers in Germany can also decrease in the future. We believe a reduction of 25% by 2030 is possible."

TEMPRO is a federal funding measure within the 6th Energy Research Program. It is supported by the Jülich project management organization. It is the first project in the context of considering the energy efficiency of data centers, whereby upstream and downstream stages of the value chain are also taken into account.

The overarching goal of the project is to increase the overall energy and resource efficiency of data centers in Germany.

Two main objectives can be formulated for operationalization:

1. Creation of an evaluation basis for the holistic energy and resource efficiency of data centers
2. Research and development of new efficiency technologies in data centers that lead to significant energy savings.

TEMPRO creates a scientific basis to enable a holistic assessment of the energy efficiency of data centers. The results are made available to data center operators as a software tool, among other things.

Further information: http://tempro.uni-oldenburg.de

The project involves several partners from science and practice.
It is coordinated by Dr.-Ing. Alexandra Pehlken from the Cascade Use research group at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.

Other research partners are:

• Department of Information Systems / Very Large Business Applications (VLBA), Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg
• Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability non-profit GmbH, Berlin
• Innovation Management and Sustainability, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
• Institute of Environmental Technology and Energy Economics - Waste Resource Management, Hamburg University of Technology

The partners from the field include:

• b.r.m. business resource management, management and technology consulting
• BTC IT Services GmbH, Oldenburg
• CEWE Foundation & Co. KGaA, Oldenburg
• dc-ce Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH, Teltow
• HPE - Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Germany
• MAIREC Edelmetallgesellschaft mbH, Alzenau
• Zweckverband Kommunale Datenverarbeitung Oldenburg (KDO), Oldenburg