Eurofiber: big steps towards renewable data center energy

Intermittent renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power can fluctuate, depending on weather conditions and time of day, for example. This variability can lead to unstable power supply and quality issues such as frequency and voltage fluctuations, which can affect reliable operation.

What’s more, the fluctuating nature of renewable sources can introduce challenges to grid stability. This may lead to problems such as voltage dips, harmonic distortion, and transient phenomena, which can affect power quality. Other issues to consider include regulatory compliance, scalability of renewable power supply to keep up with data center expansion.

The Modular Integrated Sustainable Datacenter project

“Data Centers are often seen merely as consumers of large amounts of energy,” explains Hans den Heijer, Senior PR & Media Relations Manager, Eurofiber. “However, the purpose of those data centers workloads is often to work more efficiently and actually prevent a great deal of unnecessary mobility and energy usage. Analyzing vast amounts of data across offers a considerable contribution to the energy transition. With our digital services and solutions, we can really play a positive role.”

“This, in part, resulted in the Modular Integrated Sustainable Datacenter project, or MISD funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate. Together with other project participants , we are examining several really interesting challenges and issues. What do we need all that computing power for? Do we need to store our data in big facilities close to our cities or can we break the datacenter workload down into multiple smaller modules that can be distributed countrywide? What can we do to improve the current situation, individually and collectively? How can we optimally reuse excess heat?”

“MISD aims to develop a scalable, modular data center design that integrates sustainable energy sources and energy-efficient technologies,” explains Martin Vos, Business Innovation Director,  Eurofiber. “The project addresses datacenters’ growing energy demands while minimizing their environmental impact. Objectives include improving energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, and leveraging renewable energy sources more effectively within data center operations.”

“The goal of MISD is development of a new modular, sustainable, and secure-by-design edge computing concept that is to be deployed in places close to end users. The guiding principle is to achieve a significant reduction in total energy consumption, from cooling to computing power and data flows. A CO₂ reduction of more than 50% is set to be achieved in a validated, distributed setup in a field lab where different innovations developed in the project converge.” 

Redistributing workloads

“An important way to maximize the energy efficiency of the infrastructure to be designed is to spread workloads within the distributed network to those places where there are surpluses of renewable energy. This requires solid fiber-optic connections. Eurofiber is contributing specific expertise in this area. Development of a staging lab and a fiber-connected, geographically distributed field lab environment, and developing energy, data and compute use cases, are also part of our contribution to this project.”

“It’s interesting to explore what happens when you divide a big Data Center up into a number of smaller edge containers situated closer to users and use cases. Are we able to directly feed in renewable power into such modules? Can the batteries which are an existing part of the data center design double as tools to stabilize the grid locally? Once a number of containers are deployed, we would like to be able to move the compute resources and data around those modules, making it possible to adjust energy usage to availability on the grid, while also enabling a more dedicated performance profile, tailored to the customers need for different use cases.”

“To manage performance, latency, availability, and energy usage parameters a cloud orchestration layer is necessary, that can respond to the desired input and output parameters. Having proper insights in usage patterns of other power consumers in  the vicinity could add to the energy stabilizing functions of a distributed data center design. One could even introduce dynamic pricing, based on these parameters, and make energy efficiency work economically“.

Strong emphasis on sustainability

Eurofiber places a strong emphasis on sustainability as part of its business operations, aligning its efforts with its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitments. For example, Eurofiber has set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2025 and aims to transition to 50% circular products by the same year. The long-term goal is to achieve 100% circularity by 2030. Eurofiber Cloud Infra is also focusing on innovations to minimize energy consumption in data centers. This includes advanced cooling systems, energy-efficient UPS systems, utilization of residual heat, cold corridors, smart lighting, and the use of sustainable materials. All Eurofiber Cloud Infra data centers run on green energy, underscoring the company’s commitment to sustainable digital infrastructure.