Data centers consume millions of homes’ worth of electricity each year, with much of that electricity simply powering the cooling systems that keep the facilities operational.
Data centers consume millions of homes’ worth of electricity each year, with much of that electricity simply powering the cooling systems that keep the facilities operational. Researchers at Penn State are addressing this inefficiency by using artificial intelligence (AI) to dynamically adjust data centers’ power usage to peak when the weather is favorable and electricity is affordable.
The team developed software, powered by a new physics-based AI learning model, that analyzes real-time climate and economic data to optimize data center cooling. The software works by simulating a virtual data center that serves as a training space for an AI agent — a system that can make highly complex decisions and learn over time. A trained agent can provide cooling recommendations personalized for the climate and economic market of a data center, specifically optimized for a facility’s location.
The new approach is detailed in a paper accepted and set to be presented by the researchers at the IEEE ITherm Conference in May.
Read More: Pennsylvania State University
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