Green Initiatives
Square Data Facilities are built and operated as green data facilities:
Innovative Heat Recapture:
Housed in a unique, energy efficient building, Square has harnessed the natural ability of running water to cool the facility. A cooling tower provides cold water to our air conditioning units that, via ducting, blow cold air into the room. These same air conditioning units are connected to a heat exchange system that uses the heat from the returning air to heat the building’s hot water supply. This innovative system reduces the power needed by the building and reduces the cooling needed in the data centre. Together they reduce carbon emissions and lessen the environmental footprint of Square as a whole.
Clean Hydro Power:
As we are located in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, we are able to use clean hydro power generated by local rivers to power the facility. Hydro Power is far cleaner than many energy alternatives.
Power Monitoring Project:
We have recently launched a free service for all of our customers where we monitor the power that their equipment draws and provide them with a detailed report at the end of each month. Combined with our tips on reducing server power, this will allow Square’s customers to manage their power needs more closely, thus saving them money and reducing their carbon emissions.
Ambient Temperature:
Square uses the latest in data centre research and innovation to determine the most efficient and environmentally friendly way to maintain the centre. Studies show that data centre room temperature should be kept at 74 degrees (5-10 degrees higher than most data centres) as excessive cooling has little beneficial effect on servers yet produces billions of tones of unnecessary CO2 emissions.
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Square maintains a cold aisle temperature of 74 degrees in an effort to reduce excess CO2 emissions caused by unnecessary energy use. Our HVAC system ensures temperatures are controlled at a level that allows optimal server performance AND minimal CO2 production.
“Another important change is to make sure set points for the ambient data center temperature are not set too low. Data centers that ordinarily run at 68 degrees can gain a 10 percent energy savings just by using a recommended set point of 74 degrees.” Source: link
“74 degrees – The temperature to which cold aisles can be set in datacenters. Most datacenters are overchilled, which is costly. Adjusting the temperature, along with some inexpensive basic practices, can put a dent in those cooling bills.”
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Facility Layout:
Square uses a hot aisle/cold aisle orientation to ensure that warm, expelled server air is channeled to the heat exchanger while freshly cooled air is taken in by the servers. This improves the performance and life span of the servers. We are currently working to achieve hot aisle containment to completely seal off hot air and avoid it mixing with the fresh, cooled air. This will further reduce the cooling needed and the CO2 produced as AC efficiency will improve significantly. Learn More
At Square Data Facilities each data centre is arranged with a hot aisle/cold aisle layout in order to maximize airflow efficiency and improve the performance and life of your servers. This arrangement ensures that only cool air is drawn into the servers while the hot air being pumped out the back remains enclosed in the “hot aisle” where it is channeled out of the room and recycled. (This air is then channeled to a heat exchanger and used to heat the water of the surrounding building)
“Hot/cold aisle (or hot aisle/cold aisle) is a method of cooling servers in data centers in which every aisle between rows of racks is bounded with exclusively hot-air outlets or exclusively cool-air intakes. Air is brought into the cool aisles from underneath and exhausted from the hot aisles overhead. This produces constant air circulation through the racks, provided there are no “holes” through which cool air can leak without encountering hardware.” Source: link
“The key principle in effectively using air to cool high-density data centers is to achieve utmost isolation between the chilled supply air and the heated return air. This guiding principle is the reason for arranging data centers in a hot aisle/cold aisle layout, which is supported by all reputable standards and is cited as a best practice in recent studies by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2 and Intel 3.”
Source: link