This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
While cryospheric research at National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) documents evidence of climate change, it is ironic that the carbon footprint of its computing systems is large. NSIDC is installing an energy-efficient, carbon footprint reduction upgrade to its research computing facility that includes reconfiguring the layout of its computer equipment; replacing conventional air conditioners with indirect evaporative cooling systems; installing a roof mounted solar power array; and upgrading connectivity to the Internet.
The upgraded facility positively impacts NSIDC's scientists conducting cryospheric research; assures the flow of critical data to hundreds of off-site scientists; expands NSIDC's IT systems reliability and ability to provide internet web services such as rapid data browse and online data analysis. It also illustrates several ways how similar data centers can reduce carbon footprints and sustain the cyberinfrastructure critical to future scientific activities.
NSIDC's scientists are working on NSF, NASA, and NOAA funded research addressing the Earth's cryosphere - its snow and sea ice cover, permafrost, glaciers and ice sheets - both as a key indicator and as a driver of climate change. Science questions include: why is the Arctic's sea ice cover shrinking at a faster rate than expected; how will Arctic warming affect the permafrost and could warming lead to release of carbon presently stored in these frozen soils; and how is the Antarctic ice sheet changing?
Several local partners join NSIDC in this effort. An undergraduate engineering research project is evaluating this energy conservation project and will develop a website to make monitoring and design support data available to the public. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is co-authoring a technical report, to distribute the concept to other data centers across the country.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) serves as research center for climate and polar ice cap monitoring and currently archives and distributes massive amounts of satellite and other science data from NASA, the NSF and NOAA to researchers around the world. While the data center occupied only 2% of the building space, it used half the power of the entire building. The irony of the NSIDC’s situation stems from the fact that the tool (the data center) used to study the problem (climate change) is actually contributing to the problem. Therefore, when it became necessary to replace and upgrade the existing cooling infrastructure, NSIDC placed high priority on solutions that would reduce demand and dependency on the local utility provider. The NSIDC "Green" Data Center retrofit project involved the renovation of a 1,600-square-foot data center housed in the Research Laboratory 2 (RL2) building (77,000 gross square feet/49,175 net square feet) on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. Part of the project included server virtualization and consolidating operation into one space. The project was a successful effort by a consortium of university staff, a utility provider, and Federal research organizations to significantly reduce the energy use of an existing data center through a full retrofit of a traditional air-conditioning system. The cooling energy required to meet the data center’s constant load has been reduced by over 70% for summer months and over 90% for cooler winter months. The new cooling system design includes a unique cooling system that uses both airside economization and a new air conditioner that uses the efficient an indirect evaporative cooling system. In 2009, the total power used by the data center operations was 120kW. Today, the new retrofitted data center uses about 38kW. The data center also includes a 50 kW roof-mounted PV array that charges a UPS to replace the need for a backup generator. The PV system is expected to offset approximately 36,000 kWh of coal-produced power annually. On sunny days, the data center is carbon zero. A goal of this project was to create awareness of simple and effective energy reduction strategies for data centers. Although this particular project was able to maximize the positive effects of airside economization and indirect evaporative cooling because of its geographic location, similar strategies may also be relevant for many other sites and data centers in the U.S. and around the world.
