Energy Efficiency Assessment for Data Center in Finland: Case Study

As the data-driven economy grows, we are facing unprecedented challenges of improving energy efficiency in data centers. Minimising the cooling energy demand in data centers is one of the main objectives. This paper investigates overall energy consumption and the energy efficiency of cooling system for a data center in Finland as a case study. The temporal energy consumption characteristics, cooling infrastructure and operation of the data center are analysed. The main problems about cooling energy efficiency and the factors that may contribute toward higher efficiency are identified and further suggestions are put forward. Results are presented of an extensive evaluation of the energy performance of the study data center with a view to energy recovery. The conclusion we can draw is that even though the analysed data center demonstrated relatively high energy efficiency, based on its power usage effectiveness value, there is still energy saving potential.