The Cool-Data project addresses a critical challenge to the transition identified in Denmark and Europe and addresses the need formulated by the European Commission in its Code of Conduct for Energy Efficiency in data centers (DCs) to limit their CO2 emissions.
The large energy demand for cooling data centers is jeopardizing the effort to reach the deep decarbonization target. In Denmark, the climate goal for 2030 is 70 percent CO2 reduction compared to 1990.
In the Cool-Data project, we will work on developing a flexible thermal cooling and storage system that can store renewable energy from wind turbines and solar cells when there is a surplus of it, and use this energy in the cooling process. At the same time, the system must also be able to send the excess heat from the cooling of the servers to the district-heating network.
This will create an energy system where, in the future, data centers and server rooms will be fully integrated with both the electricity and district heating systems and save energy and CO2. We expect to be able to reduce the data centers' energy consumption by up to 80 percent and in the same time to reduce CO2 emissions by operating the data centers in a flexible way, using different real time inputs.
The cooling solution includes developing and testing an innovative phase-change material (PCM) storage and state-of-the-art controller system using artificial intelligence (AI) also developed during the project. The AI-based controller integrates the thermal storage to modular cooling equipment, resulting in a more efficient and flexible cooling system.
The solution will be installed and tested in integrated cooling systems at the end users' industrial sites, at two of the project partners (GEV Grindsted and Naviair).
Cool-Data will create growth and exporting opportunities by developing a ready-to-be-implemented and exportable smart cooling solution.
The partners in the project are DTU Compute, DTU Civil Engineering, DTU Management, EnergyCool, GEV, Naviair, MD Energi, and Center Denmark, where the methods and data from the research project will be collected.
The project is funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark in the time frame 01/09/2020 → 31/08/2024
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