Direct free cooling, hot water cooling, use of waste heat, adiabatic – all of this increases the energy efficiency of data centers. We show what is suitable for what.
Not only CPUs and graphics chips, but also many other components of IT systems continuously generate heat and must be included in the cooling. According to the law of conservation of energy, the amount of thermal energy to be dissipated corresponds exactly to the amount of electrical energy that the systems in the data center absorb.
The cooling and air conditioning of the data centers also requires additional energy, especially to move the heat through fans or pumps, to humidify or dehumidify the air and to generate cold in compression refrigeration systems, for example. Across Germany, the energy requirements of server rooms and data centers in 2021 were 17 billion kWh or 16 TWh and thus 59 percent higher than in 2010. The data centers thus draw significantly more electricity than the entire city of Berlin with around 13 TWh. The cooling and air conditioning of the data centers alone requires 3.5 TWh per year – here too with an upward trend, although the proportion of the total energy requirements of the data centers is slightly declining.
