Commercial, Demand Management, Energy Efficiency, GHG Emissions  -  August 20, 2018

Google implements AI to handle cooling of data centers

New artificial intelligence software being implemented at Google data centers is expected to not only reduce the need for human monitoring of its cooling systems but also to increase the energy efficiency of these sites.

After years of developing this technology, Google fully handed the reins to regulating the ventilation systems of its data centers to an AI system and estimates the new smart functionality will return a 40% drop in energy use, according to a report by MIT Technology Review. The algorithm was developed by DeepMind, a London-based artificial intelligence company Google acquired in 2014.

The monitoring of cooling systems and adjusting them as needed to lower power consumption was previously conducted by an algorithm and would then be passed along to data center managers, who would decide whether or not to implement them. That decision has now been left to the algorithm itself to manage.

"It’s the first time that an autonomous industrial control system will be deployed at this scale, to the best of our knowledge," said Mustafa Suleyman, head of applied AI at DeepMind.  

The company predicts millions of dollars in energy savings and a drop in its carbon emissions by implementing the technology, which determines the most energy efficient cooling configurations within the data center fan and ventilation systems.

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