Riello UPS’s Leo Craig on why data centre operators should use the increasing popularity of smart grids to rethink the role of their uninterruptible power supplies, and transform an underutilised asset into a valuable money-maker
In the next five years, the number of connected devices in the UK will more than double from 270 million at present to 625 million. Whether it’s the smartphones that dominate our personal lives, or the automation and machine learning that’s revolutionising industry, all the evidence points to the fact we’re in the era of data.
Of course, this is music to the ears of the data centre sector. It’s why storage and processing capacity here will soon total more than 900,000m2 — that’s 140 full-size football pitches.
But there’s a price to pay for all that processing – power. Even though server room efficiency has come on in leaps and bounds, a data centre is still an energy intensive entity. Larger facilities can easily use 30 GWh of electricity a year. That’s a £3 million annual bill. Globally, trends suggest data centres will use a fifth of all energy by 2025 as demand grows.
In the UK, our energy network faces heightened pressures. Last year saw the amount of electricity produced in Britain drop to the lowest level since 1994. Renewables like solar, wind and tidal now provide a third of the country’s total energy supply.
Despite the environmental advantages, shifting to low-carbon makes it harder for the National Grid to balance supply and demand. The obvious solution is a decentralised network of smart grids connecting together a variety of sources in real-time to provide a secure supply 365 days a year.
As the landscape changes, our industry can’t afford to be left behind. Luckily for data centre operators, the answer lies close to home in the form of their UPS systems.
Despite its undoubted potential, data centre operators tend to view battery storage with a great deal of scepticism. To some extent that’s understandable. When downtime costs thousands of pounds a minute, using a UPS for anything other than its primary role as a back-up supply can be seen as adding an unnecessary layer of risk.
But what if resilience isn’t compromised? What if it’s actually enhanced? Recent research found that 83 percent of data centre managers would participate in demand side response (DSR) if it didn’t negatively impact on core activities. This means in principle they could be open to the idea of re-evaluating the role of their UPS.
Using smart grids to unleash the true power of uninterruptible power supplies
