Data centers use more than 1.5% of all electricity in China and the U.S., with continuing growth. This paper reviews the power hierarchy levels within modern data centers. It considers energy consumption and power electronics challenges across all levels of a data center, including building distribution, dc architectures, and conversion down to the board level. Power electronics plays a central role throughout the hierarchy, and emerging approaches are described. Strategies that enhance center energy efficiency, both in terms of overall center operation and in terms of computation performance, are discussed.

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Data center challenges and their power electronics

Environmental assessment of domestic solar hot water systems: a case study in residential and hotel buildings

Cost-effective analysis for selecting energy efficiency measures for refurbishment of residential buildings in Catalonia

Performance analysis and exergo-economic optimization of a solar-driven adjustable tri-generation system

Sports facilities (SFs) consume massive energy given their unique demand profiles and operation requirements. Intelligent and effective solutions are necessary to tackle the matter of facilities’ sustainability and efficiency. Promoting efficient and environmentally sustainable SFs is pivotal towards environmentally friendly and socially resilient cities. There is a lack of systematic literature review focused on the progress in SFs operation, sustainability, and energy optimization. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research presents the first review article addressing the research gap in building operation management and optimization for SFs compared to other types of buildings and SFs located in hot climatic zones compared to cold ones. The topic’s significance is highlighted with emphasis on the climatic zone and the characteristics of SFs. A comprehensive review and in-depth discussion of existing solutions are presented. Limited studies covered the management and optimization of SFs for the past five years compared to residential and commercial buildings, and 71% of them were for facilities located in cold regions. About 45% of the surveyed works targeted swimming pools since they are the most popular SFs’ type with the highest energy consumption per usable area. 39% of the reviewed studies employed simulation-based approaches to investigate the subject, 26% used artificial intelligence and machine learning, and 35% utilized optimization algorithms and other standard approaches. The limitations of those works and the prospects in energy and operation optimization of SFs are presented. The latter includes deploying evolving typologies such as deep learning, developing modular solutions that can be integrated into existing technologies, and deploying renewable energy systems for sustainable facilities. Finally, the active role of SFs in energy markets is discussed. 

https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/149178/1/Review_paper_RSES_Revision_2_Clean.pdf

Performance and energy optimization of building automation and management systems: Towards smart sustainable carbon-neutral sports facilities

A techno-economic optimization model of a biomass-based CCHP/heat pump system under evolving climate conditions

Microgrid energy management strategies assessment through coupled thermal-electric considerations

Spain has been one of the first countries worldwide to develop a legal framework that aims to fully develop the potential of the solar thermal systems for DHW in the residential building sector. Given the lack of references and the complexity of the building sector, several problems have arisen as the application in practice has showed more difficulties than expected. One of the problems detected it’s been the lack of standardization of sizing methodologies among the installers and engineers; to solve this, the administration has made a big effort to generate a precise and simple sizing method for all the actors in the sector. This paper describes the work carried out to generate that methodology.

/pdf/new-calculation-methodology-for-solar-thermal-systems-c8tjzizeq5.pdf

New Calculation Methodology for Solar Thermal Systems

New Features for Solar Thermal Simulation in Transol

The use of information technology services is increasing and causes a rising energy demand of data centres. In order to cover the requirements linked to this effect and respond to the energetic and environmental goals, fossil fuels need to be replaced by renewable energy sources, and methods to increase the efficiency of the processes have to be developed. Regarding the energy supply of data centres, the complex integration of different energy systems into the technical infrastructure of the data centres is challenging. Within the RenewIT project [1], fourteen thermal and electrical power supply concepts for data centres have been investigated [2]. Regarding intermediate results of the project, the four concepts with combined heat and power production (CHP) provide the most promising solutions. One of the concepts with CHP, the system biogas-fed solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), is presented to show the methodology of modelling and simulating the CHP subsystem including non-series products with EBSILON [3]. The complex part load behaviour of the subsystem is identified and the information is transferred into TRNSYS [4] to increase data processing and minimize computing time.

Oscar Camara

Papers

A techno-economic optimization model of a biomass-based CCHP/heat pump system under evolving climate conditions

Microgrid energy management strategies assessment through coupled thermal-electric considerations

New Calculation Methodology for Solar Thermal Systems

New Features for Solar Thermal Simulation in Transol

Methodology for EBSILON simulation studies of on-site generation CHP systems for data centre