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Winner of the DCD Global Award 2019 – Nonprofit Industry Initiative of the Year was Boden Type DC in collaboration with EcoCooling, H1 Systems, Fraunhofer, RISE & Boden Business Agency
This award is about recognizing the great initiatives to educate and influence the data center sector that NGOs, professional bodies and academia put together.
Funded by the European Horizon 2020 project, this prototype 500kW facility in the small town of Boden uses every trick in the book to lower its environmental impact: it runs on renewable energy, runs holistic control and doesn’t have batteries or gensets.
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During week, December 10-12, the partners in the AUTODC project (autonomous datacenters) met in Helsinki for a 2-day workshop and a review. The project is in the EUREKA program ITEA3 funded by Vinnova Sweden, Business Finland and NSF Canada.
An autonomous datacenter should be able to, without any human intervention, from a best effort perspective continue its operation independent of contextual interference, such as intermittent power failure, failing components, overheating etc.
The project is set out to develop technology enablers and demonstrations. The aim is that the enablers can be used to operate smaller datacenters 10-100 kW being it edge or remote with zero touch. The basic idea is to install a node, leave it and exchange the whole node at end of life.
For this a design concept of a distributed network of nodes and the robust nodes themselves needs to be in place. Software to balance load and orchestrate an edge cloud is assumed to exist. The project will research and develop new innovations in the areas of design for no maintenance, redundancy for robustness, monitoring for holistic overview, machine learning for modeling and control for optimization and zero-touch operations.
The partners in the project are Ericsson, RISE, Swegon, Swedish Modules, ITRS, Comsys, Hi5, Clavister, Lund university, KTH, Luleå university, Granlund, Orbis, KWSet, Aalto university, MLT, Mariner and St. Mary’s university.
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Scientists and engineers are already taking up the challenges from the new European Green Deal. The EU-funded WEDISTRICT project presented its approach during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid.
The beginning of a story often starts in an unpretentious place. A place like an undeveloped piece of land in the industrial park of Alcalá de Henares, 35 kilometres East of Madrid. Within the next 18 months, this area will be turned into a solar park and equipped with a modern biomass boiler. The aim is to use it to heat (or cool) a nearby building without using any fossil fuel.
“We want to demonstrate that it’s possible to have a 100% renewable system, in Alcalá, but also in other cities in Sweden, Poland and Romania.” Maria Cambronero is the coordinator of the WEDISTRICT project, an initiative funded by the European Commission to integrate different green technologies in district heating systems across Europe.
At each of the four test sites, different technologies are being trialled to play on the strengths of that particular area.
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As part of my trip to Sweden to represent OCP at the “Datacenters Meet 5G at the Edge” workshop, organized with LTU and IMasons, I also wanted to see first-hand how RISE SICS North and their consortium partners were going about achieving such laudable efficiency aims for the project.
The Boden BTDCone research project, sponsored by the EU as part of the Horizon 2020 initiative, has seen a lot of data center industry press recently, as their stated goal is to construct and operate Open Compute Project(OCP) IT gear in the most cost and energy efficient data center in the world, with minimal environmental impact. This is being achieved by integrating adiabatic fresh (direct) air cooling, modular building design, and clean and high quality electricity supplied by renewable energy sources within an ideal environmental climate. The research is being carried out in partnership with the award-winning RISE SICS North, Sweden’s national research institute.
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The objective of the Swedish Data centerIndustry Association is to support the business interests of the members by;
- Organize activities in which, the Members participate by using services fromthe Association
- Being a spokesperson for companies and organizations in the Data CenterIndustry in Sweden
- Supporting internationalization by positioning the Swedish Data CenterIndustry
- Formulating national Research and Innovation agendas for growth
- Communicating the Data Center Industry’s needs internally in Sweden as wellas internationally
The association will with its activities support the Swedish datacenter industry and create added value of economical and intellectual art forthe members and strengthen relevant Swedish industry.
Please join us at the Linked group and on our web site
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How much greenhouse space can one data center heat? And how much CO2 emissions can we mitigate by using this heat instead of burning peat?
Well, this is one of 3 scenarios that have been visualized in the project #DCfarming that will be presented on the next workshop – showing a medium scale datacenter of 1MW than can heat 3000 sqm of farming saving the farm about 2300tons of CO2-emissions.
Did you know that if All the data centers in the region of Norrbotten added a greenhouse – they could heat about 100 000 sqm of greenhouses for year round production! That is a lot of food! And lots of saved CO-emissions!
Last months we have met large datacenter operators and breweries with a lot of waste heat that could heat greenhouses and produce food year around. On the image you can see one of three scenarios of potential greenhouses that could save 2300 CO2 equivalents in emissions to heat the greenhouse.
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European Commission representatives visited the BodenTypeDC in Sweden to conduct the 2nd Project Review.
The project is foreseen to have high potential impact and should be presented to EC policy makers of the ICT sector. Thanks to the Project Officer, Pau Rey-Garcia and the two external reviewers Giuseppina Alcamo and Thierry Martial Pollet for putting this much time and effort into the evaluation of our H2020 project.
The great efficiency results of our holistic control approach were presented along with building design, cooling design, operation monitoring, simulation tools, load modelling and communication. A site visit to the pilot was also done.
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We have been very active at different events lately to increase our impact of our work in the datacenter industry.
November 13-14 Data Centre World 2019 was organized in Frankfurt. One session with Jon Summers as participant was called “The Boden Type Data Centre: Is this really the most efficient data centre in the World? “
The project houses over 300kW of Open Compute Project and HPC equipment at a PUE of <1.01. The panellists discussed how the experience gained in this project could be applied to other IT operations. Can this project also present serious opportunities for the server manufacturers?
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At Datacloud Nordic, that celebrates its 5th anniversary, on Dec 3 in Copenhagen the region’s digital infrastructure leadership was gathered. Tor Björn Minde held a presentation on “Smart cities and 5G-edge: the implications for industry and wider society”. He also was in a panel discussion: Designing data centres fit for the future: meeting the scale & density challenge.
Then we participated atDataCentres Ireland: Meet the Market, Nov 19-20. Jon had a presentation about the BTDC Project – Update and Lessons Learned. Then he participated in a panel discussion – Open Compute Projects and their impact on Data Centre Design and Operation. Finally Mattias Vesterlund contributed to a panel about District Heat Networks.
The event Datacenter Forum took place in Stockholm Nov 28. Here Tor Björn Minde and Jeanette Nilsson represented SDIA and helped with moderating one session track.
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RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
RISE is the Swedish Research Institute and innovation partner. In international collaboration with industry, academia and the public sector, we ensure the competitiveness of the business community and contribute to a sustainable society. Our 2,700 employees support and promote all manner of innovative processes. RISE is an independent, state-owned research institute that offers unique expertise and about 100 testbeds and demonstration facilities, instrumental in future-proofing technologies, products and services. www.ri.se |
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