RISE study reveals new temperature guidelines for greener data centres

A paper by Prof. WANG Shengwei, Director of the Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Research Institute for Smart Energy (RISE), and his research team, titled “The global energy impact of raising the space temperature for high-temperature data centres”, was recently published in Cell Reports Physical Science. 

The team underscored the need to redesign servers to operate at higher temperatures, since the cooling systems of existing data centres account for over one-third of the total energy consumption of the centres. The study found that keeping the centres at 41 °C or 105 °F, i.e., the “global free cooling temperature” coined by the team, could facilitate the free cooling of data centres and reduce the global cooling costs by up to 56%. The study also proposed new temperature guidelines that may help develop and manage more efficient data centres and IT servers in the future. (https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-science/fulltext/S2666-3864(23)00444-7)