Data Center Refrigeration

Data center cooling is the system that maintains the ideal operating environment for all of the equipment in a data center. Since data centers have a combined consumption of about three percent of the world’s electricity, there is a significant amount of electricity generating heat. If not managed properly through an effective cooling system, the IT equipment will likely malfunction, incur expensive damages, and cause downtime.

Data center thermal management is essential for equipment reliability, energy efficiency, preventing data loss, performance optimization, safety, cost, operational efficiency, and minimizing environmental impact.

Efficient thermal management ensures that individual electronic components operate within their optimal temperature ranges, also optimizing component-level energy consumption. As component temperatures rise, so does their internal resistance, which can decrease performance or increase the overall power consumption. Undercooling of components can lead to a massive increase in computational energy consumption. In contrast, overcooling or inefficient cooling systems can lead to unnecessary energy expenditure to maintain optimized computation energy consumption.

Data center cost is tied directly to energy consumption. Efficient thermal management strategies reduce overall operation costs. By optimizing cooling system energy costs against computational energy consumption costs, data center operators can minimize operation costs and meet computational performance demands.