The energy consumption of data centres in the EU is predicted to reach 104 TWh in 2020. With the continuous infusion of IT services in our daily lives and the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), distributed data centres and the cloudification of the legacy computer systems this number should come as no surprise. And energy is indeed a precious commodity. As such, to ensure sustained availability, reliability and security of Europe’s critical infrastructures, data centres should reinforce their investments towards energy efficient business innovation and successfully lead the on-going energy transition. Taking up such a pivotal role will bring opportunities for energy efficient data centres to not only reduce their operating costs and improve their performance and efficient use of resources, but also create new revenue streams through waste energy reuse and energy flexibility services offerings.
CATALYST
What is the goal of the project?
CATALYST aspires to turn data centres into flexible multi-energy hubs, which can sustain investments in renewable energy sources and energy efficiency. Leveraging on results of past projects, CATALYST will adapt, scale up, deploy and validate an innovative technological and business framework that enables data centres to offer a range of mutualized energy flexibility services to both electricity and heat grids, while simultaneously increasing their own resiliency to energy supply.
What is the result of the project?
The CATALYST business and technology framework will enable Data Centres to “follow the energy”, that is:
- Reuse and trade their residual heat to lower the overall system-level energy distribution footprint, reduce DC energy costs and even create a new DC income source over longer times.
- Assess resiliency of energy supply and flexibility against adverse climatic events or abnormal demand, trading off data centre assets related to energy generation and consumption with local or distributed Renewable Energy Sources (RES), energy storage and efficiency.
- Exploit migration of traceable IT load between federated Data Centres matching the IT load demands with time-varying onsite RES availability, delivering energy flexibility services to the surrounding energy (electricity and heat) grid ecosystems.
Who initiated the project and which organizations are involved?
A geographically distributed across Europe consortium lies at the heart of the project, bringing their unique set of expertise to build a strong, focused team.
- Engineering, Data Centers Owner (Italy - Project coordinator)
- SingularLogic, Data Center integrator (Greece)
- ENEL, utility company (Italy)
- Alliander, Distribution System Operator (The Netherlands)
- Green IT Amsterdam, non-profit organisation (The Netherlands)
- Schuberg Philis, Data Centre Owner (The Netherlands)
- Qarnot, Data Centre Owner (France)
- Power Operations Ltd., Small Medium Enterprise (UK)
- Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Data Centre Owner (Poland)
- Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, University (Romania)
What is the next step?
Join the kick off event of the newly established Green Data Centre Stakeholders Group and find out more about how collaboration can turn data centres into leaders of the energy transition! Registration and more information available at :
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/green-data-centre-stakeholders-group-kick-off-tickets-45548811722?aff=eac2
What can other cities learn from your project?
The adaptation and replication potential of the CATALYST solution will be demonstrated by carrying out four pilots in operational data centres, spanning through the full spectrum of data centre types, from fully distributed, High Performance Computing (HPC) to colocation and legacy, and architectures, from large centralized versus decentralized micro data centres.
This is a lovely project :) good luck https://www.myscouting.online/
Hi Joe ! Thanks for your comment, yes please we can get in touch to see if there is any synergy :) Contact me at : julie.chenadec@greenitamsterdam.nl
Best,
Julie
Hi guys,
Can a startup like ours get involved in the project? We'd love to see if we can help data centres operate greener by matching demand with renewable intermittent supplies.
Joe