Green Energy Management System for Evaluation of Edge Computing Facilities

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse emission emitted through human activities and is present within the atmosphere as a part of the Earth's carbon cycle. The increase in carbon emission has many negative effects such as causing climate change. Many factors play a role in the increase in this worldwide carbon emission, especially the structures that emerge with the development of technology, such as data centres, which have an important role in increasing carbon emissions. Artificial-Intelligence-Augmented Cooling System for Small Data Centres (ECO-Qube) project focuses on edge data centres since they are important because of their energy-saving potential. Several Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are developed to evaluate the energy efficiency of the data centres and their environmental sustainability. The ECO-Qube project determines an assessment methodology for data centres following the most important standards like ASHRAE TC 9.9 2021, EN50600 Standard Series, and the EU Code of Conduct. The main KPIs used in this project are Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Renewable Energy Factor (REF), Energy Reuse Factor (ERF), Primary Energy Savings (PES), CO2 Savings, and performance Per Watt (PPW). These KPIs are sufficient for the real-time assessment of data centres within this project and can give a good idea of the improvements achieved. Digital technologies such as EMSs (Energy Management Systems) are part of the solution to reduce energy consumption, as they enable more efficient use of resources. From this perspective, an EMS has been designed in the scope of this project to track the energy demand, operate the energy supply in cooperation with the building/district’s EMS, and calculate the project’s KPIs which enables precise evaluation of data centre’s current state and the effects of upgrades done to a data centre.