A cyber‐physical management system for medium‐scale solar‐powered data centers

Abstract

SummaryThe effort to reduce the environmental impact and carbon footprint of data‐center operations has led to the emergence of “green” data centers, which are designed to reduce energy consumption and to increase their use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). Despite the advances demonstrated by hyper‐scale facilities in energy efficiency and the use of green energy, small and medium‐scale data centers, which contribute to over 50% of the total electricity consumption and carbon emissions of the sector, face significant challenges in the adoption and exploitation of RES. In this article, we present the steps taken to transform a medium‐scale, academic data center into a “green” one that uses solar power. In particular, we describe the design and implementation of: (i) a collocated photovoltaic facility and (ii) a cyber‐physical system comprising IoT sensor devices, a microservices platform, and a visualization and analytics dashboard that supports the configuration and monitoring of the infrastructure. Using data collected from the platform and dashboard, we show the environmental and financial advantages derived from this transformation, and the potential that arises from the availability of integrated operational data.