SST-PB3-VME-2 At the beginning of this year, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Network Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the National Energy Administration jointly issued a notice, agreeing to start the construction of national computing hub nodes in eight places, including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia, and planning 10 national data center clusters, and the “East number West calculation” project was officially launched.

Under the guidance of the 14th Five-Year Plan, “East count West count” and other policies, data centers, as the underlying support of the digital economy, have also ushered in a golden age of development. Opportunities and challenges coexist, and data centers, as a high-load industry, are duty-bound to promote the process of carbon neutrality in an orderly manner.

Under the influence of a variety of factors, how to achieve the “development” and “carbon neutrality” of the data center industry has become the focus of common attention of upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry.

SST-PB3-VME-2 Data center power supply and distribution face challenges

As an indispensable source of energy for data centers, electricity has put forward new requirements and greater challenges for data center power supply and distribution systems under the influence of policies such as “East count West count” and “carbon neutrality”. In view of the development trend of data center power supply and distribution, how to achieve digitalization and data intelligence in data center power supply and distribution, IDC reporters interviewed Zhao Yongzhan, president of ABB Electric China.

ABB Electric China President Zhao Yongzhan

SST-PB3-VME-2 ABB, as an international electrical industry leader, has been deeply involved in China’s west-east power transmission, south-to-north water transfer and other important national strategic projects, and the “East number West calculation” project is also deeply involved. Zhao Yongzhan said that in ABB’s view, the same as the west-east power transmission and south-north water diversion projects, the “east-west count” project will also be a long-term strategic project with a large investment scale and a long construction period.

Compared with the previous two, “East to West” also has its particularity, “on the one hand,” East to west “project compared with the west to east power transmission, south-to-north water transfer, its civil engineering is less, on the other hand, in the context of rapid digital transformation, the demand for computing power is growing exponentially, so as an important computing infrastructure, data center for the speed of the construction period is extremely high. Zhao Yongzhan stressed.

SST-PB3-VME-2 With the gradual advancement of the “East number West calculation” project, as well as the deepening of the carbon neutral process, the data center energy supply is no longer simply from thermal power, more and more applications such as wind power, hydropower, photovoltaic, but also make the data center power supply and distribution system more complex, data center power supply and distribution system is facing more challenges, data center power distribution into the era of change. Zhao Yongzhan said that no matter where the power source is, there is only one goal for the data center power supply and distribution – security and stability, “at this stage, in the case of more and more renewable energy applications, how to ensure that these supply of ‘unstable’ renewable energy in the data center ‘stable’ application, has become a ‘top priority’.” Zhao Yongzhan stressed.

At the same time, in Zhao Yongzhan’s view, in addition to the higher requirements for the deployment speed, the environmental protection, use efficiency, and the degree of intensification of the equipment have been put forward.

Digitalization enables IDC power supply and distribution

With the deepening of the digital transformation process in various industries, data centers, as an important support for digital transformation in various industries, are also ushered in a critical period of digital transformation. The transition from traditional data centers to new data centers covers the entire life cycle of data centers, which naturally also includes the most important areas of power supply and distribution for data centers.

SST-PB3-VME-2 Zhao Yongzhan said that the digitalization and digital intelligence of data center power supply and distribution should also take safety and reliability as the core to improve power supply efficiency. “ABB has long been in the distribution of digital layout, based on safety and reliability, orderly promote the distribution of digital process, and not only limited to the data center industry, there is also digital demand at the load side.” Zhao Yongzhan stressed.

In Zhao Yongzhan’s view, the digitalization of data center power supply and distribution should be considered from two aspects. First of all, the need for long-term technical accumulation of products, improve the digital level of power supply and distribution products themselves, can collect more data, and even data processing; Secondly, a digital management platform is needed to unify the management of these digital products, so as to improve equipment efficiency, “in the future, in the data center operation process, through digital means, greatly reduce the difficulty of operation and maintenance, so as to improve the operational efficiency of the entire data center at the same time, through more detailed data analysis, further reduce operating costs.” When talking about the overall digitalization goal of the data center, Zhao Yongzhan clearly pointed out.

In response to the digital needs of data center power supply and distribution, ABB has also had a layout in the development and iteration of products and solutions. Zhao Yongzhan introduced that ABB started from two levels of asset management and energy management.

At the asset management level, ABB has greatly reduced operation and maintenance costs by digitization of power distribution equipment products, reducing the frequency of regular inspection, and implanting algorithms to achieve “predictable” product maintenance and repair, which not only reduces operation and maintenance costs, but also reduces the incidence of accidents, thereby improving the stability of data centers.

At the energy management level, Zhao Yongzhan said that the digitalization of the product is only the beginning of the digitalization of the data center power supply and distribution system, and it is more important to establish a perfect system, “the use of a perfect system system, to create a digital closed-loop on the energy supply side and the demand side, and at the same time, it is also necessary to combine new energy applications and other levels, and finally realize the digitalization and digitalization of energy management.” Zhao Yongzhan pointed out.

Flexible, stable, low carbon

Under the guidance of policies such as “East number and West calculation”, more and higher requirements have been put forward for data centers, and modularity has become one of the options for fast and low-carbon deployment of data centers, as well as for the field of data center power supply and distribution.

ABB uses a modular approach to its solutions that is easy to scale. ABB, which has been deeply engaged in the industry for many years, always puts security and stability in the first place, which can be said to be very suitable for data centers with high requirements for uninterrupted power supply and security.

Not only this, in the context of the “dual carbon” strategy, as a high-capacity data center industry, it is obligatory to orderly promote the process of carbon neutrality. In this regard, Zhao Yongzhan said, “Take UPS as an example, ABB’s UPS can achieve efficiency of more than 97%, at the same time, we are further optimizing products, improve to 98% and above efficiency products will soon meet with you.” Zhao Yongzhan stressed.

It is worth noting that ABB also published its sustainability report earlier this year, which shows a 39% reduction in CO2 emissions in 2021 compared to the 2019 baseline. In response to ABB’s proposed carbon neutral plan, Zhao Yongzhan said that ABB also officially launched a carbon neutral schedule in 2020, and strive to achieve carbon neutrality at the operational level on a global scale by 2030.

As a leader in power and automation technology, ABB is also promoting its own process of green, low-carbon and sustainable development in an orderly manner in the process of helping data centers achieve faster and greener, and contributing to the carbon neutrality of the entire industry.