Follow up to related previous blog post:
Do water shortages threaten adiabatic cooling schemes within data centres?The Environment Agency’s Drought Prospects report published in early March warns that, if the dry weather continues this spring, the drought could spread as far north as East Yorkshire and as far west as the Hampshire/Wiltshire border,. The whole of the South East and East Anglia are already in drought.
Seven water companies across the South East have announced that hosepipe bans will come into effect from 5th April. These restrictions only affect domestic and recreational use, so are not an immediate threat to data centres operating adiabatic cooling.
What will happen if, restriction or not, the taps dry up? Well (no pun intended), if you have one of the data centres that installed mechanical cooling as a back-up to your adiabatic system then all that will happen is that you’ll get less free cooling than you expected. Your energy savings won’t be as good as predicted and the ROI will be down but your data centre will continue to run.On the other hand, if you have one of the data centres that rely on the adiabatic cooling and did not install mechanical cooling as a back-up (and there are some), then you will have a problem. Dry bulb temperatures in the UK can reach 36°C and so without the evaporative cooling effect to bring this down, and if you don’t have mechanical cooling, you will be delivering air to your servers at 36°C or more. Not good.
If you are concerned about your cooling system, or would like free, impartial advice on any aspect of your data centre infrastructure, please contact James Wilman using our enquiry form or call 0845 9000 127.