RenewIT, a European Commission research project, has launched a portfolio of free software tools and associated research to encourage the development of renewable-powered data centres and to improve the energy efficiency of existing facilities, services and equipment.
These tools and research will help data centre operators and designers create a compelling business case for using on-site and grid sources of renewable energy as well as implementing energy efficiency measures.
“Since our project began, the momentum around powering data centres with renewable energy has increased. In particular, Google, Apple, HP have started investing millions, and in some cases billions, of Euros into projects designed to lower IT-related carbon emissions,” said Andrew Donoghue of 451 Research and RenewIT project spokesperson. “Following the UN Climate talks in Paris, we believe the industry will have a renewed focus on cutting CO2 emissions. Our research and software tools are free to use to encourage data centre owners and industry suppliers to tackle this important issue.”
The project has released a number of freely available software tools and research, with more available in 2016:
· The RenewIT Tool: The main output of the project is an online data centre renewable and energy efficiency planning and simulation tool. It will be available for beta testing in early 2016.
· Renewable energy optimised data centre monitoring tool: an online monitoring tool for data centre operators to manage facilities that generate energy on-site using renewables sources such as solar and wind*.
· A catalogue of advanced renewable and energy efficiency technologies: a range of data centre design documents to facilitate the integration of renewable and energy efficiency technologies. Examples include combining district heating and cooling networks, re-use of heat, free cooling, and electrical storage.
· Renewable energy optimised data center workload models. This includes research and prototype models detailing RenewIT’s approach to optimising data centre IT workloads to improve energy efficiency and reduce their environmental impact.
· Green data centre library featuring a collection of TRNSYS-based energy components to model both energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
The software tools and research can be accessed directly from the RenewIT website www.renewit-project.eu
RenewIT also continues to work closely with the data centre industry through its advisory board and its team of data center operators who provide ongoing data and feedback on tools and research. The project is also cooperating with other research projects to develop new renewable energy and energy efficiency metrics through the Smart City Cluster.
