Ice-Based Cooling in the Data Center: Less Carbon, More Profit

Today’s data centers are under constant pressure to do more with less

The expectation of what more means is clear. Data centers are increasingly complex and intertwined within society. They must provide more service than before, and house greater amounts of critical data and applications, all while communicating ever more securely and reliably across multiple sites and clouds. 

The expectation for what less means is trickier to navigate – especially in an industry that prioritizes both reliability and efficiency. Even as data centers become more important, their investors and customers feel the need to cut costs. They want to provide transparency into their carbon impact, with everything from materials and equipment to power usage – and are ultimately hard-pressed to reduce emissions.

How significant are these emissions?

Data centers are so energy-intensive that they account for 2.4% of global electricity usage. Data center companies are pressured to reduce their emissions for their own reporting. It is their direct responsibility. 

But even when it comes to customers’ overall operations, data centers represent the critical Scope 3 Emissions.

• Scope 1 Emissions are the direct emissions that are owned and reported by an organization, for example: what is produced by the gas running its company cars. 

• Scope 2 Emissions are indirect but still reported by the organization, for example, the purchased electricity that runs their facility. They did not generate it, but they bought it and benefited from it.

• Scope 3 Emissions are caused by activities from assets – such as a data center – not owned or controlled by the organization, but that indirectly impact it through its value chain. Scope 3 Emissions do not need to be reported and yet they are the largest contributors to a given organization’s carbon footprint. So, to truly reduce their emissions – and help turn the tide in the larger environmental crisis – it must take stock of all emissions, especially Scope 3 and including its data centers.

Why are data center emissions so high?

A significant amount of data center costs and emissions are associated with cooling. 

Data processing requires extensive amounts of electricity, and ALL that electricity consumption turns into heat that needs to be rejected, most of the time using active cooling systems which consume (generally speaking) 30% of all the data centers total energy consumption.

Nostromo ensures the data center’s resilience, because cooling is mission critical.

So, how can data centers use energy more effectively and efficiently?

In order to reduce both costs and emissions, data centers can and should embrace energy storage technologies.

Without storage, a data center is fully reliant on the grid. And at its mercy, that energy can be expensive or cheap – produced from solar and wind or carbon-heavy from fossil fuels. The data center has no control over the electricity-related carbon that it consumes.

But with its own energy storage system, a data center can ensure that it is using cheap, clean energy around the clock. So, ultimately an energy storage system will reduce both emissions and costs.

What is the ideal way to store energy?

There is a reason why to this day, very few data centers installed Li-ion batteries on site. Li-ion technology can be unsafe, has high degradation, and has a negative influence on the environment both when its rare-earth materials are being mined and extracted and when being sent to a landfill at its end-of-life cycle.

Ice-based energy storage is safer without such risks and is far more environmentally and financially beneficial.

Ice-based storage allows data centers to shift 30% of their electricity consumption on a daily basis and by that save money and decarbonize their own tier II carbon emissions, and at the same time, support the goals of customers, making these data centers more competitive.

How does Nostromo’s IceBrick^® system work in the data center?

The Nostromo IceBrick^® system stores cheap, clean, carbon-free energy during the day when solar and wind sources are plentiful. It then allows the data center to utilize this stored energy later for cooling in lieu of the bad, carbon-laden energy consumed by the facility chillers. 

The system is modular, does not require much space, and is easily retrofitted to data center buildings and their existing HVAC systems. It provides carbon-free cooling 24/7. 

Nostromo ensures the data center’s resilience because cooling is mission-critical. It provides redundancy of cooling in case of an emergency – for example, to replace equipment or infrastructure failure that, unsupported, could increase temperatures and endanger computer storage. Also, operating its high-efficiency chiller outside of charging hours can support the site’s chillers during low-efficiency periods – ensuring that, big picture, the HVAC system saves money and reduces the carbon footprint. Ultimately, with so much at stake, it’s good to have a backup in the form of an additional chiller.

The Nostromo IceBrick^® means that the facility and the many individuals relying upon it are seamlessly secure – and the organizations invested in it are both lower in carbon and higher in profits.