A Google data center in Taiwan will gain a new sustainable thermal energy technology. Most energy-efficient storage systems use ice water or ice for cooling.
The system is also cheaper for Google. During the day, only water and ice are used for cooling, keeping the air conditioning off. During the night, when local power rates are cheaper, the air conditioning is turned on to help. This makes electricity spending fall by up to 50% over traditional data centers.
In all, Google is investing $ 700 million to build three data centers in Taiwan that will use similar cooling systems. They will join the two others the company has in Asia, in Hong Kong and Singapore. The new systems are expected to be ready by 2013.
The new data centers will be developed to meet the increased demand for enterprise services, especially Gmail and YouTube, by mobile device users in the region. In addition to these Asians, the company also has six spaces in the United States and two more in Europe that are used to keep the company’s services running.