Beijing: China‘s internet industry reports strong growth in recent decades, but its data centers, large-scale servers and cellular base stations consume energy at a faster rate. Therefore, Chinese technology companies have started working on environmental solutions.
According to a report by the China State Energy Network Research Institute, electricity consumption data centers alone are expected to exceed 200 billion kWh in 2020, representing 2.7% of the country’s electricity consumption.
By 2030, electricity consumption at China’s data center will exceed 400 billion kWh, representing 3.7% of the country’s total electricity consumption, the report added.
“China’s electricity consumption Internet industry is growing at an annual rate of about ten percent. It will double in seven or eight years and become a major source of energy consumption in the future, “Wang Yuanfeng of Beijing’s Jaotong University told Xinhua.
Wang, a carbon reduction expert and environmental advocate, said businesses in the sector must act quickly to build greener Internet infrastructure, Xinhua reported.
Chinese technology giants such as Huawei and Tencent are trying to build a zero-carbon Internet industry.
At the World Mobile Congress in Shanghai in 2021 in February, Huawei presented its solution for a zero carbon network, including minimized base stations, server rooms, data centers and widespread use of green electricity.
Huawei’s vice president and president of its digital product line, Zhou Taoyuan, said Huawei could reduce energy consumption by using high-efficiency, low-power and highly integrated servers and minimizing room occupancy at base stations.
Its data centers can use indirect evaporative cooling technology to save 17% energy compared to traditional chilled water solution, Zhou added.
Suon Energy Senior Vice President Yao Yong believes that improving liquid cooling technology is the best way to overcome the bottleneck in the data center’s energy efficiency.
“It can improve the stability, efficiency and service life of servers and improve server deployment density. Data centers can be more environmentally friendly with less noise and more recycled backup heat.”
Tencent has selected regions with enough green energy to build its data centers, such as Huailai in Hebei Province in northern China, which has an abundance of wind energy, or Qingyuan in southern China. Guangdong Province which has rich hydropower.
In Qingyuan, in addition to consuming hydroelectric power, data centers have used a high-efficiency power supply module and free cooling technology that uses natural cold sources to reduce energy efficiency (PUE) to 1.25.
PUE is a measure of how efficiently a computer data center uses its power. The lower the PUE, the greener the data center.