The professor proposes a drastic solution to reduce the electricity consumption of data centers

The University of Vaasa has studied how data centers could be made more energy efficient than they are today.

There really is a need for research, because the grid company Fingrid and Datakeskusteollisuus ry have estimated that the electricity consumption share of data centers will rise to around 10–12 percent of Finland’s electricity consumption in just over three years. Roughly estimated, this would correspond to a capacity of about 2,000 megawatts.

Estimates have been made around the world that the energy consumption of data centers could increase to 20 percent of global electricity use in the 2030s, if no measures are taken to prevent it.

“The speed of change is now so great that it raises concerns and that means we have to be able to react to it,” says the professor at the University of Vaasa Petri Välisuo.

In Vaasa, Välisuo leads a joint project between the University of Vaasa, Åbo Akademi and Vocational College Novia and Vaasa University of Applied Sciences, which aims to develop and research emission-free, energy-efficient and flexible data center solutions.

According to Välisuo, the most effective energy-saving solutions so far are related to the more efficient utilization of waste heat in data centers than at present and the centers’ flexible electricity consumption.

Liquid cooling reduces electricity consumption

Computer halls are usually cooled with air. However, more efficient solutions are needed for managing energy consumption and cooling processors. Nowadays, almost a quarter of the energy use of data centers is reduced to cooling, lighting and losses.

According to Välisuo, liquid cooling would be significantly more efficient than air cooling. In liquid cooling, water is typically led directly to the cooling plates on the surface of the server’s chips.

“In a liquid-cooled data center, waste heat could be used to heat buildings even without any heat pump solutions,” says Välisuo. According to him, this would be much more efficient than the current waste heat recovery of air-cooled data centers.

Välisuo says that the challenge of recovering waste heat in air-cooled data centers is also its rather low temperature.

“In a liquid-cooled data center, the waste heat is already at a higher temperature. Less energy is also needed for the cooling itself.”

Almost 20 data centers are now under construction in Finland. Välisuo cannot say how many of them will be water-cooled after completion. According to him, in the future, however, this should be required when granting permits due to energy saving and ease of beneficial use.

“If the waste heat generated in the data centers could be put to good use, for example, in heating premises, drying biomass or heating greenhouses, then it could partially even replace the fossil or combustible form of heat production used there,” Välisuo reminds.

It is largely a matter of where data centers are built. In the vicinity of residential centers, waste heat can be well utilized for district heating of apartments, offices and commercial premises. Instead, new uses for waste heat should be sought in sparsely populated areas.

Data centers could also be flexible in electricity consumption

How flexible could data center electricity use be in the future? According to Välisuo, it would be very flexible if, by developing the automation of data centers, the centers would be able to participate in demand flexibility, i.e. consume little electricity when it is expensive.

According to Välisuo, the question is what kind of load the data center is running at any given time. Some of the tasks cannot be moved, but some could very well be done a little later.

“Artificial intelligence agents could work flexibly and agree with their customers that jobs that require high computing power are performed when there is a lot of electricity available and it is affordable,” Välisuo says. He admits that there are still many things that require development, but on a theoretical level this could be done.

As one incentive to increase energy efficiency, Välisuo proposes an energy certificate for data centers. This way, for example, in real estate taxation, more energy-efficient data centers would receive more favorable tax treatment than others.

“A certain minimum energy efficiency could also be required in building permits for data centers. But of course before that we should make sure that we have a wide range of new technology available.”