Development of a Simulation Tool to Estimate Electricity Consumption and Determine the Optimum Cooling System for Data Centers

Electricity consumption of datacenters is increasing significantly with the growth in Information Technology sector. Electricity consumption of datacenters occupies approximately 2 % of total electricity consumption in the USA which makes IT Sector second most electricity-consuming sector. Cooling system in a traditional datacenter is responsible of 30-60% of final electricity consumption. In this study, a software is developed to estimate the final energy demand of a datacenter and electricity consumption of the datacenter for variable cooling systems by using Visual Studio C# interface and SQL server. Climate data, physical properties of the datacenter building and IT equipment situated in datacenter inputs are used in order to software to calculate annual energy demand of datacenter. Then electricity consumption of the datacenter is presented on monthly basis and electricity demand of datacenter for each cooling system is listed on annual basis. Developed software is validated by using power demand value, physical properties of datacenter building information and equipment list of an existing data center. Typical climate data insertion tool and economic analyses will be added to the software in order to be used worldwide. Therefore, this is an ongoing study.