Dusseldorf The extreme heat in California is not only a major burden for people and nature, but also for technology. Twitter is currently feeling this: According to a report by the TV broadcaster CNN, a data center in the capital Sacramento has failed – due to the “extreme weather”, as it says in an internal e-mail.
The company switches to other data centers. In the event of further failures, the online service may not be able to continue to be offered to all users, a manager warns the employees. All updates that are not urgent are therefore postponed. The motto is obviously: Don’t take any risks.
Oracle and Google fared less well in July. When the thermometer rose to more than 40 degrees in Great Britain, the two companies had to shut down data centers for several hours after cooling system failures – as a precautionary measure to protect the servers. Cloud services were particularly affected.
In Europe, the heat may be over for the time being. However, the record summer of 2022 has shown that global warming poses problems for Internet service providers and data center operators, for example because cooling systems reach their limits during hot periods or power generation falters. And now, as a result of the conflict with Russia, problems are threatening even in the winter.
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“The risk of experiencing a widespread blackout in Germany is higher than it was a few years ago,” warns Günter Eggers from the Eco Association of the Internet Industry. A blackout would have “serious consequences for almost all aspects of our civilized life,” especially in winter.
“The industry regards the technical and organizational preparation for a power outage lasting up to three days or longer as an essential part of its service,” says Eggers. However, it is completely unclear whether the measures will still work if the employees can no longer reach their workplaces due to the lack of transport options.
Fear of power outages
Germany is an important location for data centers, especially Frankfurt: Numerous companies have settled near the large Internet node De-Cix. Despite all the efficiency gains that the industry is achieving, the demand for energy is growing rapidly: According to an analysis by the Borderstep Institute, electricity consumption in 2020 was 16 billion kilowatt hours (kWh). In 2018 it was 14 billion.
In view of the energy crisis, the economy is concerned about security of supply. A stress test by the Federal Ministry of Economics recently came to the conclusion “that crisis situations in the electricity system that lasted by the hour in the winter of 22/23 are very unlikely, but cannot be completely ruled out at the moment”.
The industry sees itself prepared for such situations. There are “extensive emergency plans to protect our global data center infrastructure, networks and systems,” says Jens-Peter Feidner, Managing Director of Equinix Germany, a leading provider of data centers. Therefore, there is a “high degree of reliability and redundancy”, even in the event of unexpected power failures.
In view of the war in Ukraine, the company took additional measures, for example to have enough diesel for the emergency generators that start up in the event of power failures. “We assume that we won’t have to get by with diesel for more than a few hours or, in the worst case, a day,” says Feidner. However, in the event of an emergency, one is prepared to have to bridge a longer period of time.
Nevertheless, the Bitkom association, in which IT and telecommunications companies are organized, demands that data centers with system-relevant IT infrastructure be given “priority” consideration in emergency plans. Because operators of data centers are “enormously” threatened, especially the small systems. So far, the plans have only applied to larger locations with more than 3.5 megawatts of connected load.
Heat is enough for entire districts
In addition to emergency care, cooling is a major issue for companies. Hundreds or even thousands of servers are in use in their data centers, sending e-mails, transmitting videos or training algorithms. A by-product of these calculations is intense heat.
The cooling of servers, storage and networks is therefore a major cost item when operating data centers. The market research institute “Next Move Strategy Consulting” estimates that spending on cooling systems will increase from a good ten billion US dollars in 2019 to around 34 billion US dollars in 2030.
The importance of cooling technology continues to increase. Because even in countries with moderate temperatures, there are more and more frequent heat waves due to climate change. This summer, for example, the thermometer rose to 40 degrees in Great Britain. This applies even more to other parts of Western Europe, including Germany.
The problem: When building the data centers in these countries, factors such as heat and water availability were not taken into account, says British serial founder and researcher David Mytton, who deals with sustainable IT in his publications. As a result, some data factories are reaching their limits, such as Google and Oracle in Great Britain in the summer.
Now the systems have to be retrofitted and new ones have to be designed differently – especially since modern data centers need more electricity due to the growing data volume and the cooling requirements are therefore increasing. “The life cycle of the data centers is long, they sometimes run for decades,” he emphasizes.
Construction ban for Google due to lack of water
An example: A data center with water cooling needs several million liters of water per year just for cooling. The researcher David Mytton does the math: A medium-sized system with an output of 15 megawatts needs as much as three hospitals or more than two golf courses. In relation to an entire country, this is manageable. But: In areas with water scarcity there is considerable controversy.
For example in Neuenhagen in Brandenburg, right on the border with Berlin: According to a report by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB), the responsible water association vetoed Google when it wanted to open a location. Consumption was estimated at 1.3 million cubic meters per year, not much less than in the Tesla factory in nearby Grünheide. According to the supplier, too much for the region.
Awareness of the problem is therefore growing in the industry. This is shown by a survey conducted by the Borderstep Institute among around 120 experts, including many data center employees: According to this, two thirds expect that climate change will have a high or very high impact on the construction and operation of the systems. Nobody wants to experience an incident like the one currently happening on Twitter.
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