Data centers, energy consumption and Moore’s Law

Sheila Moorcroft, Research Director, Shaping Tomorrow

Data centres are increasingly central, although relatively invisible, to the economy. The rising cost of running them and the growing challenge of cooling them are driving innovation.

What is changing?

A recent report estimated that in 2005 data centres consumed about 1.5% o the world’s electricity – about 150 billion kWh of power, about 25% of which is for cooling. The problem is that about 70% of that cooling power is lost. As the speed and density of chips increases, the need for fast and effective cooling increases; for every doubling of speed there is a quadrupling of heat generated.

Enter water – as well as other experiments. Water cools between 3500 and 4000 times more effectively than air based cooling systems. IBM, among others, is looking at water to cool chips- creating tiny 50-micron thick ‘tubes’ within the chip stacks to circulate water. Google is exploring moving whole data centres off shore onto floating barges using sea water to cool them and wave power to support energy production. Still others are exploring locating data centres down old mines or in cold climates.

Intel has successfully tested ‘outside air’ cooling systems in external temperatures of up to 90o F relying on circulation rather than air conditioning. In Taiwan, Micro-Star International is developing the ‘Air Power Cooler’ which uses the movement of air to drive a piston based fan – and no electricity.

Elsewhere co-location and cooperation plans are afoot to use waste heat for greenhouses, local swimming pools or housing up to 3 kilometres away.

Why is this Important?

The number of datacentres is set to grow – driven in part by the popularity of such sites as Facebook and Flickr but also by the migration to cloud computing and ever greater demand for digitally based processes and services. New regulations, for example, are increasing record keeping by 50% per annum.

According to a recent Environmental Protection Agency report, US data centres alone could be consuming nearly 125 billion kWh of electricity by 2011, twice today’s total, if nothing is done. Best practice levels of current innovation could achieve a 50 percent reduction; state of the art innovations, a two thirds reduction.

Heat could constrain the relentless progress of Moore’s law, slowing technical progress.

Data centres’ collective carbon footprint already exceeds that of nations such as Argentina or the Netherlands: by 2020 it is likely to exceed that of air travel.

As energy security, cost reduction and climate become ever greater priorities, this ‘hidden’ but essential part of the world economy is likely to be the focus of greater attention and innovation to the benefit of all.

Duke’s Rogers: China besting U.S. on green tech

Jim Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy Corp., says China is ready to pass the United States as a leader in energy technology. China often plays the heavy in discussions on the global issues of climate change and energy consumption. And Rogers notes the country plans to build the equivalent of 1,000 Cliffside coal plants by 2016. But China, he said, already leads the world in manufacturing solar energy panels. Next year the country will become the world’s top manufacturer of wind turbines.

“They are living the balanced solution on energy” says Rogers.

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Goodbye wires, Hello WiTricity

MIT team experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer. Potentially useful for powering laptops, cell phones without cords.

Franklin Hadley, Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies

Imagine a future in which wireless power transfer is feasible: cell phones, household robots, mp3 players, laptop computers and other portable electronics capable of charging themselves without ever being plugged in, freeing us from that final, ubiquitous power wire. Some of these devices might not even need their bulky batteries to operate.

A team from MIT’s Department of Physics, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN) has experimentally demonstrated an important step toward accomplishing this vision of the future. The team members are Andre Kurs, Aristeidis Karalis, Robert Moffatt, Prof. Peter Fisher, and Prof. John Joannopoulos (Francis Wright Davis Chair and director of ISN), led by Prof. Marin Soljacic.

Realizing their recent theoretical prediction, they were able to light a 60W light bulb from a power source seven feet (more than two meters) away; there was no physical connection between the source and the appliance. The MIT team refers to its concept as “WiTricity” (as in wireless electricity). The work will be reported in the June 7 issue of Science Express, the advance online publication of the journal Science.

Late-night beeps
The story starts one late night a few years ago, with Soljacic (pronounced Soul-ya-cheech) standing in his pajamas, staring at his cell phone on the kitchen counter. “It was probably the sixth time that month that I was awakened by my cell phone beeping to let me know that I had forgotten to charge it. It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging.” To make this possible, one would have to have a way to transmit power wirelessly, so Soljacic started thinking about which physical phenomena could help make this wish a reality.

Radiation methods
Various methods of transmitting power wirelessly have been known for centuries. Perhaps the best known example is electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves. While such radiation is excellent for wireless transmission of information, it is not feasible to use it for power transmission. Since radiation spreads in all directions, a vast majority of power would end up being wasted into free space.

One can envision using directed electromagnetic radiation, such as lasers, but this is not very practical and can even be dangerous. It requires an uninterrupted line of sight between the source and the device, as well as a sophisticated tracking mechanism when the device is mobile.

The key: Magnetically coupled resonance
In contrast, WiTricity is based on using coupled resonant objects. Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects. A child on a swing is a good example of this. A swing is a type of mechanical resonance, so only when the child pumps her legs at the natural frequency of the swing is she able to impart substantial energy.

Another example involves acoustic resonances: Imagine a room with 100 identical wine glasses, each filled with wine up to a different level, so they all have different resonant frequencies. If an opera singer sings a sufficiently loud single note inside the room, a glass of the corresponding frequency might accumulate sufficient energy to even explode, while not influencing the other glasses. In any system of coupled resonators there often exists a so-called “strongly coupled” regime of operation. If one ensures to operate in that regime in a given system, the energy transfer can be very efficient.

While these considerations are universal, applying to all kinds of resonances (e.g., acoustic, mechanical, electromagnetic, etc.), the MIT team focused on one particular type: magnetically coupled resonators. The team explored a system of two electromagnetic resonators coupled mostly through their magnetic fields; they were able to identify the strongly coupled regime in this system, even when the distance between them was several times larger than the sizes of the resonant objects. This way, efficient power transfer was enabled.

Magnetic coupling is particularly suitable for everyday applications because most common materials interact only very weakly with magnetic fields, so interactions with extraneous environmental objects are suppressed even further. “The fact that magnetic fields interact so weakly with biological organisms is also important for safety considerations,” Kurs, a graduate student in physics, points out.

The investigated design consists of two copper coils, each a self-resonant system. One of the coils, attached to the power source, is the sending unit. Instead of irradiating the environment with electromagnetic waves, it fills the space around it with a non-radiative magnetic field oscillating at MHz frequencies. The non-radiative field mediates the power exchange with the other coil (the receiving unit), which is specially designed to resonate with the field. The resonant nature of the process ensures the strong interaction between the sending unit and the receiving unit, while the interaction with the rest of the environment is weak.

Moffatt, an MIT undergraduate in physics, explains: “The crucial advantage of using the non-radiative field lies in the fact that most of the power not picked up by the receiving coil remains bound to the vicinity of the sending unit, instead of being radiated into the environment and lost.” With such a design, power transfer has a limited range, and the range would be shorter for smaller-size receivers. Still, for laptop-sized coils, power levels more than sufficient to run a laptop can be transferred over room-sized distances nearly omni-directionally and efficiently, irrespective of the geometry of the surrounding space, even when environmental objects completely obstruct the line-of-sight between the two coils. Fisher points out: “As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of such wireless power, it would charge automatically, without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside of such a room.” In the long run, this could reduce our society’s dependence on batteries, which are currently heavy and expensive.

At first glance, such a power transfer is reminiscent of relatively commonplace magnetic induction, such as is used in power transformers, which contain coils that transmit power to each other over very short distances. An electric current running in a sending coil induces another current in a receiving coil. The two coils are very close, but they do not touch. However, this behavior changes dramatically when the distance between the coils is increased. As Karalis, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, points out, “Here is where the magic of the resonant coupling comes about. The usual non-resonant magnetic induction would be almost 1 million times less efficient in this particular system.”

Old physics, new demand
WiTricity is rooted in such well-known laws of physics that it makes one wonder why no one thought of it before. “In the past, there was no great demand for such a system, so people did not have a strong motivation to look into it,” points out Joannopoulos, adding, “Over the past several years, portable electronic devices, such as laptops, cell phones, iPods and even household robots have become widespread, all of which require batteries that need to be recharged often.”

As for what the future holds, Soljacic adds, “Once, when my son was about three years old, we visited his grandparents’ house. They had a 20-year-old phone and my son picked up the handset, asking, ‘Dad, why is this phone attached with a cord to the wall?’ That is the mindset of a child growing up in a wireless world. My best response was, ‘It is strange and awkward, isn’t it? Hopefully, we will be getting rid of some more wires, and also batteries, soon.’”

This work was funded by the Army Research Office (Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies), National Science Foundation (Center for Materials Science and Engineering), and the Department of Energy.

Investors Shine $130M on eSolar

From redherring.com, 21 April 2008, 12:19 by Ken Schachter

eSolar, whose large-scale solar power facilities are designed to rival coal-powered plants, has closed on $130 million in funding from Idealab, Oak Investment Partners, and Google.org, the company said Monday.

The Pasadena, California, company, which competes against companies like Ausra (backed by Khosla Ventures) and SolarReserve (funded by United Technologies), plans to build a demonstration facility at an undisclosed location in Southern California later this year, said Rob Rogan, eSolar’s executive vice president, corporate development.

“We believe we’ve cut the cost of solar energy in half,” he said, without providing a firm cost per kilowatt hour. “eSolar believes we’ll be competitive with fossil fuels.

eSolar plans to use prefabricated modules manufactured oversea to cut the cost of building a solar power plant and allow utilities to build them closer to the cities that will draw their current.

Rather than use mirrors that can run to 100 square meters as other thermal solar systems do, eSolar uses mirrors that are about one square meter. Mr. Rogan said the smaller mirrors give eSolar a 10-fold advantage in concentrating sunlight aimed at tanks filled with water that is turned to steam, which is used to turn steam turbines.

Mr. Rogan acknowledged, however, that the 70-person company’s proposed 33-kilowatt power plants, large enough to power 10,000 to 25,000 homes, will be cost-effective only in regions with abundant sun like Caloifornia, Nevada and Australia.

Still, Bill Gross, eSolar Chairman and founder of Idealab, said in a statement that the business model will allow the company to compete against plants fueled by traditional fossil fuels.

“Solar’s primary business goal is nothing short of making solar electricity for less than the price of coal, without subsidies,” he said.

 

Clean Energy Research Centre set up in Shanghai

16:27, March 17, 2008

The Xinao Group and Shanghai Communications University jointly set up the Clean Energy Research Centre that was officially established on the 16th. The research center will focus on the research and applications of clean alternative energy sources: dimethyl ether (DME). At the same time, Xinao Group will also build a DME fuel station on the Shanghai Communications University campus and provide free bus fuel, according to Xinhua Net.

DME is an important chemical raw material that can be used in chemical synthesis; and could also serve as a supplementary fuel for motor fuel and civilian gas. Because of its unique advantages, DME is an important clean energy, an alternative to diesel and liquefied petroleum gas for industrial and civilian fuels; and can effectively reduce environmental pollution and resolve environmental problems triggered by the development of the petrochemical industry.

In early 2007, the Xinao Group and Shanghai Communications University have reached a clean energy strategic cooperation agreement: by effectively integrating their own respective resource advantages, they can jointly create a new pattern of energy research, development, and application. In 2007, the Xinao Group built the world’s first commercial operation motor vehicle DME station in Shanghai.

From People’s Daily Online

Large Hadron Collider - start this year sparks fear and lawsuits

Posted on CosmicLog:
Thursday, March 27, 2008 11:00 AM by Alan Boyle

EIROforum / CERN A hardhat worker is dwarfed by the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS detector. Click on the image for a larger version.

The builders of the world’s biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.

Representatives at Fermilab in Illinois and at Europe’s CERN laboratory, two of the defendants in the case, say there’s no chance that the Large Hadron Collider would cause such cosmic catastrophes. Nevertheless, they’re bracing to defend themselves in the courtroom as well as the court of public opinion.

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is due for startup later this year at CERN’s headquarters on the French-Swiss border. It’s expected to tackle some of the deepest questions in science: Is the foundation of modern physics right or wrong? What existed during the very first moment of the universe’s existence? Why do some particles have mass while others don’t? What is the nature of dark matter? Are there extra dimensions of space out there that we haven’t yet detected?

Some folks outside the scientific mainstream have asked darker questions as well: Could the collider create mini-black holes that last long enough and get big enough to turn into a matter-sucking maelstrom? Could exotic particles known as magnetic monopoles throw atomic nuclei out of whack? Could quarks recombine into “strangelets” that would turn the whole Earth into Read more

Buckyballs as hydrogen “containers”

This UltraFuture article is from the Buckminster Fuller Institute.

 

Hydrogen could be a clean, abundant energy source, but it’s difficult to store in bulk. In new research, materials scientists at Rice University have made the surprising discovery that tiny carbon capsules called buckyballs are so strong they can hold volumes of hydrogen nearly as dense as those at the center of Jupiter.

The research appears on the March 2008 cover of the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters.

“Based on our calculations, it appears that some buckyballs are capable of holding volumes of hydrogen so dense as to be almost metallic,” said lead researcher Boris Yakobson, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice. “It appears they can hold about 8 percent of their weight in hydrogen at room temperature, which is considerably better than the federal target of 6 percent.”

The Department of Energy has devoted more than $1 billion to developing technologies for hydrogen-powered automobiles, including technologies to cost-effectively store hydrogen for use in cars. Hydrogen is the lightest element in the universe, and it is very difficult to store in bulk. For hydrogen cars to be competitive with gasoline-powered cars, they need Read more