AAC Technologies – Qian Luo – 2017

Goals 

Global leading micro-component solution providers, AAC Technologies Holdings Inc., was in the middle of planning the design for its new, large data center in Nanjing, China. In an effort to pioneer the so called “next-generation manufacturing” the company wanted to ensure the facility ran highly efficiently. EDF Climate Corps fellow Qian Luo was brought on to identify energy saving opportunities throughout the design process and figure out ways to capture and reuse the waste heat produced by servers in the data center.

Solutions

After conducting an energy efficiency analysis of an already existing data center, Luo identified energy saving opportunities in heat recovery, cooling systems and power distribution. She met with HVAC engineers and suppliers to analyze the feasibility of implementing, and recommended a combination of projects, including:

• retrofitting heat pumps to recover waste heat and use it to warm the office during the winter,
• implementing chillers with a magnetic levitation centrifugal compressor and a cable of free cooling in the data center’s cooling system,
• employing high voltage direct current to distribute power for IT equipment.

Potential Impact

The energy efficiency strategy will cost roughly 2,600,000 CNY (~$390,000 USD) in initial investment, but has a short payback period of only 25 months. When the data center is partly loaded at the beginning, AAC Technologies can save 1.5 million CNY (~$225,000 USD), roughly 1.8 million kWh electricity annually and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1,272 metrics. By adding more servers to the data center, the higher the energy savings will be. Not to mention it increases the reliability–the most essential requirement for a data center.