Google’s new $700 million data centers in Taiwan will make ice at night, when electricity is significantly cheaper, and use it to cool the buildings during the day, reports Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge. It’s called thermal storage, and it’s basically a battery, but for air conditioning. — grist.org
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hmmm, energy saving? If there is an overall energy saving it's hard to get the details of that on the website. Their main point seems to be:
"The system stores energy at night, when electricity generation is cleaner, more efficient and less expensive, and delivers that energy during the peak of the day to provide cooling to the building."
so the energy demand seems to be shifted, not reduced.
In the future, as (if) the electricity grid is decarbonised there will be an advantage to flattening out peak electricity demand, so maybe this is a useful technology, but in itself, does it significantly reduce energy consumption?
Similar principle, just on a larger, urban scale: "Ice Shield" Experiment Aims to Cool Mongolian City.
Facebook's upcoming data center in Sweden, near the arctic circle, is taking a much simpler and more rational approach to energy conservation.
Facebook builds 'green' datacentre in Sweden
we're using 'thermal storage' on a project in the city right now. it makes a lot of sense in our case (18 hour building in a big city)...Google's situation is probably similar.
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