Vertiv Supports Data Centre Sustainability for Tropical Climates As Testbed Launches in Singapore
Vertiv (NYSE:VRT), a global leader in critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, today expressed its commitment to drive collaboration after Singapore’s launching of the world’s first tropical data center testbed marked a significant milestone for sustainable data center innovation.
The opening of the The Sustainable Tropical Data Centre Testbed (STDCT) follows Vertiv’s contribution to the groundbreaking collaboration between the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technology University (NTU), with funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF).
Located at the College of Design and Engineering on NUS’ Kent Ridge campus, the STDCT will provide a platform to accelerate sustainable cooling solutions that are tailored to tropical climates. Occupying a floor area of 770 square meters, the facility will provide a site to test out potential use cases for sustainable cooling solutions under hot and humid conditions.
The testbed’s launch puts in motion efforts to reduce Singapore’s data center energy consumption by 40%, slash water usage by between 30%-40%, cut emissions to 0.54 million tons annually, and bring down Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) to less than 1.2 via air and liquid cooling, all by mid-2024.
In addition to infrastructure, the facility will be a wind tunnel to foster cutting-edge research on sustainable data center growth in tropical climates. This will also see the release of a whitepaper containing recommendations for optimum data center design and operations in tropical climates, slated for the fourth quarter of next year.
The facility will also be expanded for other universities and companies to validate new data center solutions in the long term, which will widen adoption of best practices for sustainable tropical data centers.
“We are ecstatic that this facility is now up and running. The use of a row-based coolant distribution unit (CDU) provided by Vertiv acted as a catalyst for the STDCT to begin operating. Supplying cold water to proprietary cold plates, the facility was equipped with a liquid-to-liquid heat exchanger that enhanced heat transfer of the IT heat load. Vertiv also supplied the STDCT with racks, rack power distribution (rPDU), and high-density cooling solutions. These were early indicators of the STDCT’s immense potential to yield significant energy savings in spite of increased computational demands,” said Paul Churchill, vice president and general manager at Vertiv Asia.
“We’re confident that more use cases will emerge now that the STDCT has been launched, which will be a significant net positive for the digital economies across countries with tropical climates, who are seeing robust growth in data center investments,” he added.
Meanwhile, Ni De En, Director, Urban Solutions & Sustainability at the National Research Foundation, mentioned in an interview that the STDCT would enhance efforts to realize Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 goal.
“Singapore is committed to driving sustainable digital transformation and the testbed holds immense potential to do this. By bringing together academia and industry players to innovate, the STDCT is at the vanguard of meeting the challenges in power consumption and cooling, carbon footprint, and increasing rack density that data centers in tropical climates must face,” he said.
“In fact, the STDCT has amassed investments worth over SGD30 million thus far, with five research projects now underway,” he added.
