Improving Efficiency, Reliability and Life-time Cost of Data Centers Using DC Technology

With the expansion of today's digital era, the use of electronic equipment is increasing exponentially at home, office, and plants. The common denominator of these electronic equipment is that they all use Direct current (DC) power internally by converting Alternating Current (AC) power to DC power using local converters. All these converters produce losses, heat, and are prone to failures which in turn impact the equipment efficiency, life span, and reliability. In addition, these converters increase the cost of equipment they are powering and their required footprint. The issue of reliability and cost reduction is more stressing for data centers where servers, Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) systems, and IT equipment constituting the majority of the load can be powered directly through a DC grid. This paper presents a case study that compares AC and DC technologies for powering a typical data center and outlines the main advantages and limitations of each technology. This study will present a comparative analysis of a DC power system against a typical AC distribution for critical datacenter loads. It also presents a real case study of existing AC powered data center and compare the benefits of powering the center via DC instead of AC. Analytical reliability, safety and efficiency models are developed, and quantitative results are obtained based on a set of real data. The study indicates that the DC system would be more reliable, efficient and will achieve less Capex and Opex values than the AC.