Thermal management and energy optimisation of high energy demand IT systems equipment in tertiary buildings

ExpectedOutcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Better understanding of the challenges in thermal management of high-energy demand IT systems equipment in facility rooms inside tertiary buildings.
• Increased knowledge regarding solutions in the tertiary buildings case from transfer of relevant knowledge from other application field/sectors.
• Improved open access to the relevant and useful knowledge and information for the IT sector.
• Increased awareness of the most common specific use cases in tertiary buildings in EU Member States/Associated countries that could benefit from cost-effective and optimised thermal management and energy efficiency measures (solutions, practices, strategies, etc.), including solutions recovering and valorising of excess heat among others.
• Increased consensus amongst key actors regarding metrics, indicators, reporting, trends, monitoring and verification (M&V) schemes, methodologies & best practices to achieve best/optimal efficiencies through the design, commissioning, operation, management and decommissioning of IT systems equipment.
• Improved insight for future standardisation needs in relevant areas of influence (e.g. procurement, product design, manufacturing, services, cooling equipment, control equipment, buildings energy performance, operation, management, among others.) in order to facilitate further improvements and efficiencies in the relevant areas.

Scope:

Energy consumption of IT systems equipment (e.g. server racks, server rooms) inside buildings is following a significant growth due to several factors. These factors include the increasing number of installed sensors and IoT devices, which feeds the need for big data handling and the increasing demand for more powerful and advanced equipment. Various voluntary and regulatory instruments have been implemented in the past years to try to mitigate the environmental footprint of a specific equipment/device or systems in isolation. However, often these instruments do not take into account real life performance, potential inefficiencies or synergies with other systems, operation under real life set-up and control conditions, or other constraints such as those from the building energy management practices, building automation and control systems, local regulations or rules. Moreover, there is potential to improve the self-assessment and self-optimisation functionalities at all levels.

Proposals are expected to address all of the following:

• Validate and improve awareness of the cost-effectiveness and value proposition of the best/optimal thermal management and energy efficiency measures (solutions, practices, strategies, etc.) of high energy-demand IT systems equipment in facility rooms inside tertiary buildings.
• Improve the self-assessment and self-optimisation tools/functionalities of IT systems equipment inside high-energy demand IT systems equipment facility rooms of tertiary buildings.
• Facilitate open access to latest information, trends and knowledge to all players involved.
• Promote the best/optimal measures/strategies.
• Engage in the relevant standardisation initiatives and identify needs for future regulation or standardisation developments.

Specific Topic Conditions:

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 4-5 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.