Future extended power of cloud computing very much lies in the available energy power of the modern data centers that support it.
Traditional data centers are usually huge energy hogs and wasters. An average-efficiency 4MW IT capacity data center with a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of 2.0 could use about 70GW of electricity per year with an annual bill of nearly $5 million. That much capacity could power a US town of 7,000 homes (already the highest household consumption in the world). If the PUE is reduced to 1.2, it could save 40% of the total cost for the company and save enough electricity for about 3,000 additional homes.
The modern cloud data centers are designed towards more energy-efficient and greener, with higher capacity running ratio. An intense competition is seen on the energy front for modern data centers with companies scratching their heads to find smarter ways to save energy cost and build more energy-efficient ones. It’s not just a cost imperative for large infrastructure players, but more and more a strategic one for the future.
Apple by 2013 announced that its worldwide Data Centers already use 100% renewable energy including wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and bio fuels. Its largest data center in Maiden, NC, has a 100-acre solar farm combined with a bio fuel cell installation, which was completed at the end of 2013.
Google says each of its self-designed data centers uses only half of the energy consumption of most of the other data centers. Google has the smallest PUE in the industry, about 1.12 by 2012. Now at Data Center Europe 2014 in May, Google disclosed that they are running Machine Learning algorithms to further control the cooling system and may shed another 0.02 off its PUE. That will make just about 10% of IT equipment energy to use on non-compute operations, currently the highest efficiency among modern large-scale data centers.
Microsoft is also trying to improve its green energy image. MSFT just signed a 20-year 175MW wind farm deal last week for a project outside Chicago to continue its renewable energy pursuit. In 2012, MSFT initiated a joint project with Univ. of Wyoming to experiment its first zero-carbon fuel-cell-powered data center using greenhouse gas methane. In April 2014, MSFT announced the increased investment and expansion of Cheyenne data centers, bringing a total investment to $500 million. Several other new energy initiatives are also being explored globally on various scales by MSFT.
Globally, governments are also paying attentions to the data center building for cloud computing age and the energy competition associated with it. China, which is lagging behind in cloud infrastructure due to the tight control of the land and power usage by the government and foreign firms’ fear of data privacy, recently sponsored huge initiatives for the constructions of modern cloud-focusd data centers in its July 2014 data center policy meeting in Beijing. It recommended the areas of the country less disaster-prone and with more abundant natural energy resources for strategic large data centers, and also mandated that all future data centers need to meet PUE of less than 1.5.
Increased operation efficiency and greener energy sources mean less carbon emissions, less environmental footprint and longer sustainability. In the near future, when worldwide customers select their cloud providers, they may not simply choose which one offers better performance and capacity, but may choose which one is energy smarter for longer term sustainability and better social reputations. Attentions to energy innovations and competitions are definitely non-negligible for any infrastructure player or any large enterprise of the current age.