In 2024, the computing power industry will usher in the energy "big test"

With the rise of domestic GPU manufacturers, it is only a matter of time to solve the problem of chip supply outage, and for the high quality of the computing power industry, the world is facing a thorny problem - energy.

Data centers are recognized as energy-intensive industries. According to data released by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the total power consumption of China's data centers reached 216.6 billion kWh in 2021, accounting for 2.6% of the total electricity consumption of the whole society, and carbon emissions accounted for about 1.14% of the national carbon emissions.

It is predicted that by 2025, the proportion of national data center electricity consumption in the whole society will increase to 5%, and by 2030, the national data center power consumption will be close to 400 billion kWh.

Under the current situation of strong demand, how to achieve "carbon neutrality" while "maintaining development" in the data center industry is a "big test" that the data center industry and even the entire computing power industry need to face.

The "ultimate test" of computing power - energy

Based on the above background, the data center industry is undergoing an innovation in the energy structure, and energy efficiency and sustainability are becoming the focus of attention in the data center industry. In this regard, Mo Yan (pseudonym), the head of a leading enterprise in the IDC industry, told Titanium Media that with the increasing power of a single cabinet, the requirements for energy consumption are getting higher and higher. In the face of high energy consumption requirements, the development of a new generation of new energy energy storage and the promotion of green power applications is a feasible path.

At the same time, in 2024, as the trend of various industries deeply embracing the new generation of artificial intelligence represented by large models will "intensify", the demand for computing power will definitely become more and more vigorous. In this context, the demand for computing power producers - data centers will also increase. With the development of artificial intelligence, the demand for intelligent computing power will also increase, and the evolution of data centers to intelligent computing centers has become an irreversible trend.

In October 2023, the "High-quality Action Plan for Computing Infrastructure" issued by the six ministries and commissions of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology mentioned that by 2025, the scale of computing power will exceed 300 EFLOPS, and the proportion of intelligent computing power will reach 35%.

In the context of the increasing demand for applications such as AI model training and inference, the collaboration of diverse computing power has become the norm. The average power density of a single IT cabinet will increase from 6~8KW to 12~15KW, and the power density of supercomputing and intelligent computing centers will increase by more than 30kW.

According to the "2021-2022 China Data Center Infrastructure Products Market Report", the market size of data centers with a single cabinet power of more than 10kW will grow rapidly in 2021, with a growth rate of more than 10%, of which high-density data centers with a capacity of more than 30kW will grow the fastest, reaching 31%.

With the increasing power of a single cabinet, the high-motor cabinet has also become the key direction of the layout of major data center service providers in 2024, and the CEO of VNET Dong Wei once mentioned the high-motor cabinet separately in the Q3 financial report of VNET, and a person close to VNET also told Titanium Media that the high-motor cabinet will also become the focus of VNET's attention in the future and become the focus of the company's strategic layout.

Coincidentally, Liang Yan, Co-President of GDS China, also said that with the development of the computing industry, there will be more data centers with a single capacity of more than 40MW, and in response to these trends, GDS will also adjust the strategy of the intelligent computing center to be more flexible and adapt to the application and business flexibility of the intelligent computing center in the future.

As an important infrastructure to convert watts into bits, data centers have become the focus of attention in the industry at a time when they can be evaluated more and more strictly and more difficult to obtain. And energy efficiency is naturally the key to this process.

Energy test, power supply and distribution "take the lead"

The popularity of high-power cabinets and the increasing power of single data centers have put forward higher requirements for the overall power supply of data centers.

Electricity is the most important energy supply of data centers, and the power supply and distribution system is the key link that needs to be changed first in the current innovation of data center energy structure. Data centers need to operate stably all year round, and they are also inseparable from a steady supply of power and a stable power supply and distribution system. Chen Sheng, founder and executive chairman of VNET, once said that the computing infrastructure in the era of large models will be unprecedentedly developed, and behind it will be the annual electricity demand at the trillion kilowatt hour level. A green, low-carbon, cost-effective, flexible and flexible power system will be the core competitiveness and lifeline of future computing infrastructure.

Mo Yan told Titanium Media that with the increasing demand for computing power in the process of AI model training and inference, higher requirements have been put forward for the power consumption of the data center, "At present, in the process of data center operation, electricity costs account for 70% of the operating costs of the data center. Mo Yan pointed out. Power supply and distribution has always been an important part of the stable operation of data centers. In 2024, power supply and distribution will also "take the lead" in the overall innovation of data centers.

Originally, the data center mainly used alternating current, with two-way mains power access, supplemented by UPS (uninterruptible power supply), and diesel generators to ensure that the user servers in the data center would not be shut down and the business would not be interrupted. However, with the pressure of power supply and distribution, as well as the advancement of the goal of carbon neutrality, the power supply and distribution system of the data center is also changing, Mo Yan said that now, the data center not only has an AC power supply and distribution system, but also needs to build a DC power supply and distribution system, "The entire power supply mode will also develop from the original traditional UPS to the direction of new energy + energy storage." ”

Indeed, from the perspective of the layout of major data center service providers, the high-voltage DC power supply and distribution system may become one of the mainstream power supply and distribution systems of the data center in 2024. Titanium media learned that VNET will also take green DC power supply as a key development direction, and Chen Sheng has also publicly stated that the goal of VNET's second 25-year entrepreneurship: to move green DC from data centers to thousands of households.

In addition, further reducing the power loss in the power supply process of the power supply system will also become the direction of further technical breakthroughs, in this regard, Mo Yan said that the loss of the entire power supply and distribution circuit of the data center has been reduced, and the power supply efficiency has been further improved has become the common research and development direction of power supply and distribution manufacturers and data center service providers, "The power supply efficiency of the original computer room is about 94%~96%, and in recent years, major manufacturers have achieved power supply efficiency close to 98% through cloud power supply or power modules," Mo Yan pointed out," Mo Yan pointed out." However, I think there is still a lot of room for improvement, and the industry is also taking the reduction of power supply system losses as one of the main research and development directions. ”

According to Mo Yan, at present, enterprises can improve the power conversion efficiency to 99% through ACTC as the core of power conversion technology, "if the power supply and distribution circuit can save 2% of the efficiency, for the data center of large electricity users, a lot of power consumption can be saved a year, whether it is for the operating costs of enterprises, or the overall electricity consumption of the society, it is good." Mo Yan emphasized.

The source-grid-load-storage will develop rapidly in 2024

In addition to the improvement of power supply and distribution efficiency, under the guidance of the goal of carbon neutrality, the greening of data center power supply and distribution will also become an inevitable trend, in this regard, Mo Yan said, the construction of the "East and West Calculation" project, a large part of the factor is to fancy the abundant renewable energy supply in the western region, "In the first-tier cities in the eastern region, power resources are very limited, and in the western region, there are abundant power resources, a large part of which is renewable green power, and the development of the data center industry to the west is an inevitable trend." Mo Yan said.

GDS disclosed in its 2022 ESG report that in 2022, GDS increased the proportion of renewable energy use from 34.3% to 35.9%, and 30 data centers achieved 100% green power coverage.

Since the official launch of the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" project in 2022, the data center industry in the western region has developed rapidly, and from the perspective of the data center construction cycle, more data centers in the western region are bound to be put into operation in 2024. In this process, how to further increase the proportion of green power applications in data centers while ensuring the stable operation of data centers will become a problem that the data center industry urgently needs to "overcome" in 2024.

Chen Qiang, deputy director of the Big Data Development Department of the State Information Center, has also publicly stated that how to integrate and match green power represented by "wind, solar and water" with the traditional power grid and improve the utilization rate of green power in data centers is an urgent problem to be solved.

In order to solve this problem, the entire upstream and downstream of the IDC industry is actively trying new power supply and distribution architectures, among which source-grid-load-storage may become an important starting point for improving the stability of data centers and increasing the proportion of renewable energy applications.

Source-grid-load-storage is a collective term for power supply, power grid, load, and energy storage, and the organic integration of these four parts to build a new power supply and distribution system will become a breakthrough point in the energy structure innovation of the data center industry in 2024.

The source-grid-load-storage system is characterized by source-grid linkage and load-storage synergy, with the aim of improving energy efficiency, improving energy structure, and achieving sustainable development. In Mo Yan's view, if the model of renewable energy + energy storage is promoted to the data center industry, it will play a role in promoting the carbon neutrality of data centers.

Taking photovoltaic as an example, the electricity generated by photovoltaic power generation is directly transmitted to the data center without going through the "large power grid", and combined with energy storage technology, the operating cost of the data center will be further reduced. Mo Yan said.

It is not difficult to see from the layout of many IDC companies that IDC attaches great importance to the layout of source-network-load-storage business. In the first three quarters of 2023, Kehua Data's new energy business achieved revenue of 2.695 billion yuan, of which energy storage revenue was nearly 2 billion yuan, and the new orders were sufficient, and it is expected to maintain revenue growth in Q4. In addition, in the financial report, Kehua Data specifically pointed out that the company launched data center energy storage solutions, which is expected to achieve rapid growth in the future.

In fact, in addition to Kehua Data, there are many data center companies that regard source-network-load-storage as the key strategic layout of the enterprise.

It is understood that Hoyin Data has its own 5.53GW of new energy power generation in Zhangjiakou area, including photovoltaic and wind power, and puts into operation 150 kWh of new energy power generation a year;

As early as 2021, VNET cooperated with the Energy Internet Innovation Research Institute of Tsinghua University to launch the first demonstration node project of the "SPEAR" innovation demonstration project, and applied the "energy storage + IDC" operation model to its VNET Foshan Smart City Data Center (hereinafter referred to as Foshan Data Center) in Foshan City, Guangdong Province. The energy storage system can be charged during the trough period of electricity bills and discharged during peak periods by "two charges and two discharges" every day, so as to supply data centers for use, improve the economy of self-charging and self-use, and also play a role in helping the power grid stabilize the load.

Bohao Data has applied the operation mode of energy storage + IDC in its Guangzhou No. 2 data center. It is reported that Bohao Data has applied an energy storage system in Guangzhou No. 2 Data Center. The energy storage system uses lithium batteries in electrochemistry as the main energy storage products, and is equipped with three sets of electrochemical lithium battery energy storage systems with a total loading capacity of 5.16MWh of 250KW/1.72MWh.

GDSIn the latest Q3 2023 financial report, the company said that the company will work with SK ecoplant, a subsidiary of South Korea's SK GroupGDSIn the future, the new data center in Singapore will jointly carry out a pilot of fuel cell power solution technology to explore the best solution for green energy applications such as hydrogen energy, and then it may become the first data center company to use SOFC technology for power supply, and establish the first data center powered by fuel cells in Southeast Asia.......

Through the layout of many data center service providers, it is not difficult to see that source-grid-load-storage will become an important measure for the energy structure innovation of the data center industry in 2024, and the layout in advance will also allow more energy storage applications to be effectively implemented in 2024. Titanium Media believes that in 2024, energy will become one of the biggest tests in the data center industry, and energy has gradually become the key to the high-quality development of the entire computing industry.