In Paderborn Germany a wind turbine is powering a datacentre housed within its own structure, in what WestfalenWIND IT claim is the world’s first near-zero emission datacentre.
The Tier 3 datacentre contained within the wind turbine is receiving 92 percent of its power from the renewable energy source.
In order to be considered a Tier 3 datacentre the datacentre is also supplied by two independent electricity providers who provide N+1 redundancy resilience and electricity in periods of poor wind conditions.
The datacentre is part of the project ‘WindCores’ designed and operated by WestfalenWIND IT. The IT service itself is operated by Green IT – Das Systemshaus, who are a Fujitsu SELECT partner.
Christian Hoffmeister CIO at Green IT commented in the release that: “We are focused on delivering sustainable, energy-efficient and cost-effective IT solutions for our customers.”
“Unfortunately, most data centres use a considerable amount of energy derived from fossil fuels or nuclear power, backed up by diesel-powered generators in case of an interruption in electricity supply. The WindCORES solution offered by WestfalenWIND IT is the logical way for us to deliver near carbon neutral services.”
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Wind Turbine Datacentre
The German wind turbine datacentre contains Fujitsu ETERNUS storage systems and PRIMERGY servers which Fujitsu claim operate with an enhanced power management system to reduce the overall energy draw. The systems also contain AC-DC converters and the latest generation of cooling technology.
Fujitsu recently unveiled their new cooling system for datacentres which they say reduces costs by 29 percent.
In the system sensors are placed around cooling equipment within the datacentre in order to measure humidity and temperature. The data from these sensors is analysed to calculate how much energy is required to cool the datacentre and remove the humidity.
Algorithms developed in-house by Fujitsu control the intake of cold air from outside and maintain an efficient ratio of internal air to outside air. By continually monitoring the temperature and predicating in advance where cooling will be required, the system deals with temperature and humidity in an energy-efficient manner.
However, it is unclear whether the company is currently using this particular system of cooling within the wind turbines project.
Read More: Fujitsu Datacentre Cooling System Reduces Energy Costs by 29 Percent
Dr. Gunnar Schomaker co-founder of the WestfalenWIND IT Group commented that: “There is plenty of space inside many wind turbine towers for IT and Infrastructure equipment – enabling the low-emissions distributed datacentres of the future.
