Meteorological assessment and implementation of an air-side free-cooling system for data centers in Chile

Data center energy consumption in Latin America has increased considerably during last years. According to Datacenter dynamics, energy requirements during 2016 were expected to be around 3.85 GW. In Chile, the data center industry grew 14% between 2009 and 2010, whereas energy consumption increased 21.4% between 2012 and 2013. For this reason, many data centers in the country have started to evaluate efficient alternatives to reduce energy consumption such as the use of air containment techniques, air-side and water-side cooling systems. To date, existing free-cooling maps do not provide information about available hours during the year for implementing either air-side or water-side cooling systems in data centers in South America. This paper presents a thermodynamic analysis aimed to evaluate the potential use of air-side free-cooling systems in the Chilean data center industry. First, temperature and Relative Humidity (RH) variations, during three years, were obtained at 29 different stations throughout the entire country. The objective was to identify regions in Chile that meet data center thermal requirements proposed by the ASHRAE. Fiber-optic availability was also considered during the analysis. The thermodynamic model considered a white room with a thermal load of 20 kW, for which an air treatment unit was incorporated with the objective of providing cold air at 18° and 60% RH. An air treatment system was calculated at three different locations in Chile. These locations were selected since they offer high availability of fiber-optic connections (Chacalluta, Arica y Parinacota Region), strategic position for companies (Quinta Normal, Metropolitan Region), and low temperatures through the year (Carlos Ibanez, Aysen Region). Preliminary results have demonstrated that Chile is a relatively humid country. For this reason, cooling air must be dehumidified most of the time. The results also showed that even when low temperatures can be found in Carlos Ibanez, both Chacalluta and Quinta Normal offer excellent possibilities for the data centers industry. These two last locations offer more fiber-optic connections and temperature variations that lay within the range established by the ASHRAE.