The energy usage of datacenters has grown along with the increased demand, although industry developments have largely offset this growth. Due to the technologies currently used, most of the electricity used in datacenters is converted to heat. Most of these technologies are reaching the limits of their efficiency improvement potential. The energy demand of datacenters is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, in line with increased demand.
Reducing Energy Consumption
The low-energy datacenter programme focuses on reducing the energy consumption of datacenters.; 'towards energy neutral datacenters'. With our top researchers in the field of new materials, AI solutions, photonics and neuromorphic computing, this programme strives to reduce the energy need of data management, with the ultimate goal of realizing energy-neutral datacenters. We want to achieve this by both improving current technologies to reduce the energy demand of datacenters, using heat regeneration technologies and AI solutions to optimize energy consumption, and by looking at new technologies for data processing that generate less or no heat.
Pilot Plant
The solutions we develop need to be tested in a real-world setting before they can be implemented. Therefore, together with our network of spinoff companies and industrial partners, we are working on building a pilot plant on the campus of the University of Twente where the latest developments in research can be tested and refined, bringing them to proven application level.
