Transient simulation of wet cooling strategies for a data center in worldwide climate zones

• This paper evaluates the energy savings potential of wet cooling strategies for a data centre.
• Wet cooling strategies include water side economizer and indirect evaporative cooler (IEC).
• Hourly simulation is carried out for 17 worldwide climate zones using TRNSYS.
• Water consumed by these strategies and hours of operation in a year is also presented.
• Indirect IEC can lead to more than 30% energy savings in climate zones 3–7.

A promising way to significantly reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a data center is to minimize the cooling system energy consumption. To come up with the most energy efficient cooling system design, detailed analysis of various configurations based on local climate data is crucial. In this paper, an enterprise data center of 180 ton (TR) cooling load is modeled using a transient energy analysis software TRNSYS with the operating environment in the data center maintained as per the guidelines of ASHRAE TC 9.9. Promising cooling strategies including water side economizer and indirect evaporative cooler (IEC) are modeled and analyzed for the 17 worldwide climate zones defined by ASHRAE 90.1. Energy savings potential of these strategies is presented. Amount of water consumed and the number of hours the strategy is active in a year is also estimated. Results indicate significant energy saving potential of water side economizer and IEC in most of the zones. As compared to air cooled chiller systems, more than 30% energy savings can be achieved in climate zones 3–7 by using IEC. Also, more than 25% energy savings can be achieved by using water side economizer in climate zone 4 and 5.