By Dominic Cutts
Director – System Solutions, Armstrong Fluid Technology
Generating heat is an unavoidable outcome of electrical resistance within IT processors and, as IT processors become ever more powerful, the demand for cooling is rising. Chilled water cooling systems have a crucial role to play in dissipating heat to ensure server reliability and prevent downtime, but there is an environmental price to be paid. Overall energy demand of datacenters is escalating between 5% and 10% each year, and are responsible for 3% of the total electrical energy consumption in the UK. As a result, the environmental impact of datacenters has come under international scrutiny, with a number of organizations developing guidelines and regulatory frameworks for datacenter operation.