译 者 说
我们熟悉风冷、水冷、液冷，可是您听说过雪冷数据中心吗？日本WDC公司利用北海道的融雪，率先实现了数据中心的全年自然冷却，在雪冷技术的商业化领域走出了蹒跚的步伐。
据说雪给了您两种选择：铲雪或堆雪人。现在您有了第三种选择：冷却您的数据中心
It’s said that snow gives you two options: shovel or make snow angels. Now you have a third choice: cool your data center
日本北海道北部的美呗市，夏天的晴日暖风里，一座人造雪丘正在缓慢消融。雪丘上覆盖着一层灰色的隔热层，仿佛是为了保护它。但是雪丘的主人并不想永远保留这一堆雪，他们只想利用它融化时产生的寒冷。
In the city of Bibai, on Japan’s North Island of Hokkaido, an artificial hill of snow is slowly creaking and settling, gradually melting in the island’s mild summer climate. The hill has been covered with a layer of grayish insulation, as if to preserve it. But the hill’s owners don’t want to keep a pile of snow forever. They just want to use the cold it produces as it melts.
冰冷的管道从雪丘延伸到附近的建筑物。管道载送有防冻剂。但更重要的是，它还承载着一些数据中心专家的期望，他们认为数据中心冷却的未来可能依赖于雪。
An ice-cold pipe extends from the mound to a nearby building. The pipe carries anti-freeze. But more importantly, it carries the hopes of a small band of data center experts, who believe that one future for data center cooling could rely on snow.
禁止在这些斜坡上滑雪
No skiing on these slopes
北海道是冬季运动的中心。它位于日本最北端最冷的地方。即使是夏季气温也只能达到 17 到 22°C（62.6 到 71.6°F）。
Hokkaido is a center for winter sports. It’s the northernmost part of Japan, and the coldest. Even its summer days only reach 17 to 22°C (62.6 to 71.6°F).
北海道岛上第五大城市美呗不缺雪。每年约有10m降雪。虽然游客可能喜欢滑雪和单板滑雪运动，但要保持街道畅通对这座城市来说是一件令人头疼的事情。每年，该市花费 4 亿日元（350 万美元）来铲除道路上的冰雪。由于成堆的雪可能全年不化，该市将其收集在自卸卡车中并将其移至专门的融雪地点。可以说，雪是一种代价高昂的麻烦事。
There’s no shortage of snow in Bibai, the fifth largest city on the island. Around 10m falls every year. And while tourists may enjoy skiing and snowboarding, it’s a headache for the city to keep the streets clear. Each year, the city spends 400 million yen ($3.5m) shoveling the frozen precipitation up. Because heaps of snow might not melt all year, the city gathers it in dump trucks and removes it to dedicated snow melting sites. Basically, snow is a costly nuisance.
事情有了转机，室兰工业大学的 Kobiyama Masayoshi （小日山正义）教授开始试验防冻管。在小日山教授的带领下，美呗自然能源研究会研究了利用雪的方法，发现它的寒冷或“雪冷能量”实际上是有用的。该小组提议用融雪来冷却数据中心。
Or it was, until Professor Kobiyama Masayoshi of the Muroran Institute of Technology, began experimenting with pipes of anti-freeze. Under Professor Masayoshi, the Bibai Natural Energy Research Association looked into ways to make use of snow, and found that its coldness or “snow cooling energy,” could actually be useful. The group proposed cooling data centers with melting snow.
灵感来源之一似乎是日本连锁便利店 Lawson（罗森），它在2012 年为日本北部的一家商店引入了一种独立的雪冷却系统。这家商店没有使用成堆的雪，而是配备了一个 100 立方米的隔热容器，里面装满了冰冷的雪。管道中的水流过容器时被雪冷却，可用于空调系统制冷。
One source of inspiration seems to have been Lawson, a Japanese convenience store chain, which in 2012 introduced a self-contained snow-based cooling system for a store in northern Japan. Rather than using piles of snow, the store was equipped with a 100 cubic meter insulated container that was filled with cold snow. Water running through pipes in the container was cooled by the snow and used in the air-conditioning system.
小日山正义教授提出了这个想法，到 2014 年，在日本 NEDO（新能源和工业技术开发组织）的资助下，一个名为白色数据中心（WDC）的原型已经启动并运行。该系统使用传统技术所需能量的一半来冷却数据中心服务器，并使用对环境没有影响的废品。
Professor Masayoshi developed that idea and, by 2014, a prototype known as the White Data Center was up and running, backed by funding from Japan’s NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization). The system cools data center servers using half the energy required by conventional techniques, and uses a waste product with no environmental impact.
WDC的雪丘没有相关的二氧化碳排放。无论数据中心是否存在，收集雪的卡车也必须来回运行。这是一种低技术的解决方案，实施成本较低。防冻剂在雪堆和数据中心之间循环，其中二次水回路用来冷却服务器。
The White Data Center’s snow mountain has no associated CO2 emissions. Even the trucks that gather the snow would have to do it whether or not the data center existed. It’s a comparatively low-tech solution, with low costs to implement. The antifreeze circulates between the snow mound and the data center, where a secondary water circuit cools the servers.
无需清理积雪，积雪堆积成一堆，其中还包含街道上的垃圾和泥土。该团队只需在雪堆中运行一个循环流动防冻剂管道，防冻剂在穿过数据中心后通过雪堆返回。显然，在冬天，不需要雪冷却，因为环境温度低到足以单独冷却服务器。覆盖隔热材料可以保护雪堆一整年不化。“南风融雪北风凝”，今年雪堆完全融化之前，来年冬天还能收集更多雪。
There is no need to clean up the snow, which is gathered in a pile that also contains trash and mud from the streets. The team simply runs a pipe through the heap, circulating the antifreeze, which goes back through the heap after its journey through the data center. Obviously, in winter, no snow-cooling is needed as the ambient temperature is low enough to cool the servers unaided. And the snow mound - covered with insulating material to preserve it - lasts all year. More will be gathered next winter before this year’s heap has melted away.
京瓷的其他计划……
Other plans from Kyocera…
正如我们所说，北海道有很多积雪，WDC并不是岛上唯一一个使用雪来冷却数据中心的项目。在距离美呗 50 公里的石狩市，京瓷通信系统公司宣布计划建立一个完全由风能、太阳能和生物质能供电的零碳数据中心。
As we said, Hokkaido has plenty of snow, and the White Data Center was not the only project on the island to use snow to cool data centers. In Ishikari, 50 km away from Bibai, Kyocera Communication Systems has announced plans for a zero carbon data center solely powered by wind, solar and biomass.
“零排放”数据中心的建设始于 2019年 4 月，于 2021 年投产，并于 2022 年与京瓷拥有的可再生能源设施连接。该计划为各站点提供2MW 的风能和太阳能，还将从附近的第三方生物质发电厂获取能源。该项目将在石狩湾新港工业园投入使用，该工业园有“100% 可再生能源区”承诺，要求在该地区建设的所有公司都使用可再生能源为其设施供电。
Construction on the “zero-emission” data center was announced in April 2019, with the facility due to come onstream in in 2021, and be hooked up to renewable power facilities owned by Kyocera in 2022. The plan was for 2MW each of wind and solar power to be available to the site, which would also draw energy from a nearby third-party biomass plant. The project is due to go live in the Ishikari Bay New Port industrial park, which has a “100 percent renewable energy area” commitment that requires all companies who build in the area to power their facilities with renewable energy.
...与Data Dock公司相关…
...and Data Dock…
我们尚未发现该项目的任何最新更新，我们怀疑新冠疫情大流行可能已使其偏离目标，但我们已与京瓷联系以了解进展情况，并希望报告更多细节。
We haven’t found any more recent updates on the project, and we suspect the pandemic may have put it off target, but we’ve reached out to Kyocera to find out about progress, and hope to report more details.
我们也获得报道称，第三家公司将雪冷却的想法带到了气候更温和的日本本州岛。据报道，在新泻县，数据公司 Data Dock 在东京以北 174 英里的长冈市运行了一个使用可再生能源的可持续数据中心，该数据中心由融雪水冷却。
We’ve also had reports that a third company brought the snow cooling idea to the more temperate main island of Japan, Honshu. In the Niigata Prefecture, data company Data Dock reportedly ran a sustainable data center using renewable power, cooled with snow meltwater, in the city of Nagaoka, just 174 miles north of Tokyo.
从 2 月到 12 月，该地区的平均气温为 12°C（53.6°F），因此周围的降雪量会减少，但据报道该地点已经利用了积雪以及凉爽的空气。遗憾的是，Data Dock 网站似乎已关闭，其 Facebook 页面自 2019 年以来未更新，因此我们怀疑这个寒冷的数据中心可能已经“融化”了。
The area has an average temperature of 12°C (53.6°F) from February to December, so there will be less snow around, but the site is reported to have made use of it, along with cool air. Sadly the Data Dock website seems to be down and its Facebook page has not been updated since 2019, so we suspect this chilly data center may have melted away.
是时候商业化了
Time to go commercial
在我们所知道的三个日本雪地冷却项目中，似乎是WDC成功地实现了商业化。从2014年到2019年，经过5年长跑，WDC证明了自己的生存能力，2021年，WDC公司成立。
Of the three Japanese snow-cooling projects we know of, it seems it was the White Data Center which was successful enough to get commercialized. After running for five years, from 2014 to 2019, the WDC proved its viability, and in 2021, the White Data Center company was established.
2021 年 4 月，WDC开始运营，拥有大约 20 个服务器机架，位于该项目的合作伙伴之一 Kyodo News Digital 购买的 3.6 公顷土地上。“目前，一个 20 机架的数据中心作为实验设施正在运行，”WDC的一位发言人通过电子邮件告诉我们。我们被告知，它提供商业服务，有四家未具名的公司正在使用或计划使用它：“费用低于一般数据中心的费用，”我们在 WDC 的消息人士说。
In April 2021, the commercial White Data Center began operations with approximately 20 racks of servers, on a 3.6-hectare plot of land bought by one of the project's partners, Kyodo News Digital. “Currently, a 20-rack data center is in operation as an experimental facility,” a White Data Center spokesman told us by email. It offers commercial services, we were told, with four unnamed companies using it or planning to use it: “Fees are lower than those of general data centers,” said our source at WDC.
该公司制定了雄心勃勃的增长计划：“我们计划在今年年底(2022年)之前开始建造一座可容纳 200 个机架的新大楼。”虽然实验设施以每个机架 2kVA 的负载运行，但新设施将具有更高的5kVA/架的功率密度。
And the company has ambitious growth plans: “We plan to begin construction of a new building with a capacity of 200 racks by the end of this year [2022].” While the experimental facility operated at 2kVA load per rack, the new facility will have a higher power density of 5kVA per rack.
根据今年早些时候发布的政府新闻稿，WDC 计划使用来自生物质发电厂的可再生能源运营一个二氧化碳零排放数据中心。WDC 总裁兼首席执行官 Ijichi Shinichi 在一份声明中表示：“我们计划建造的下一个数据中心的规模将是当前数据中心的 10 倍，运行 200 个服务器机架。”
According to a government press release issued earlier this year, WDC plans to operate a zero CO2 emission data center, using renewable power from biomass generation plants. “The next data center we plan to build will be ten times the size of the current one, with 200 racks of servers running,” says WDC president & CEO Ijichi Shinichi in a statement.
给鱼儿送温暖
Warmth for fish
该设施也有一个附赠的好处。总裁谈到了中心如何发展。“为了有效利用能源，我们正在尝试利用服务器在冬季产生的余热在温室中种植蔬菜以及鱼类和海鲜养殖，”Shinichi 说。 “随着数据中心规模的扩大，我们计划将其变为现实。”（北欧也有类似项目，请参见本公众号2022年8月10日文章【余热回收 | 我在数据中心养龙虾】点击文字跳转查看）
There’s a side benefit to the facility too. The president spoke about how the Center may develop. “In order to use energy efficiently, we’re experimenting with vegetable cultivation and fish and seafood farming in greenhouses using waste heat produced by the servers during winter,” said Shinichi. “We plan to turn this into a reality as the data center grows in scale.”
在研究阶段，WDC 探索了针对余热利用的各种农业选择，包括鲍鱼、海胆、日本芥菜、菠菜、樱桃番茄和其他产品。据朝日新闻报道，当它进入商业阶段时，它选择了鳗鱼和蘑菇作为第一批产品。两者都可以在短期栽培后收获。
During its research phase, WDC explored various agricultural options for this heat, including abalone, sea urchin, Japanese mustard spinach, cherry tomatoes, and other products. As it enters a commercial phase, it has chosen eels and mushrooms as the first products, according to a report in Asahi Shimbun. Both can be harvested after a short period of cultivation.
鳗鱼是日本的主要主食，在过去 40 年里，鳗鱼养殖业已发展到每年约 25 万吨。WDC 已经进口了 1,700 条幼鳗，它们将在数据中心的水箱中长大成熟。数据中心冷却系统的水循环产生 33°C 的水，非常适合鳗鱼养殖，因为水箱可以全年保持在 27°C，无需加热成本。
Eels are a major food staple in Japan, where a massive eel-farming industry has ramped up to some 250,000 tons per year in the last 40 years. WDC has imported 1,700 elvers (young eels) which will grow to maturity in tanks at the data center. The water cycle of the data center cooling system produces water at 33°C, which is ideal for eel farming, as the tanks can be kept at 27°C all year round with no heating costs.
WDC 预计将运送约 300,000 条鳗鱼，这些鳗鱼将在现场养殖七个月，直至达到 250 克的商业重量。届时，它们将在全国范围内销售，并包含在当地学校的膳食中。据朝日新闻报道，它们将成为北海道养殖的第一批鳗鱼。
WDC expects to ship in around 300,000 eels, which will be grown on-site for seven months, till they reach a commercial weight of 250g. At that point, they will be sold nationwide and included in local school meals. They will be the first eels cultivated in Hokkaido, Asahi Shimbun reports.
我们都可以参加雪派对吗？
Can we all join the snow party？
WDC 的成功非常酷。其他地方的运营商可能想知道他们是否可以模仿它，但 WDC 在这方面并不令人鼓舞。我们联系到的 WDC 发言人说：“就收支而言，很难单独模仿一个有降雪的地方。” “这是因为很少有地方具备合适的条件，比如地价、降雪量和收集方法，以及生物质发电所需燃料的稳定收集。
WDC’s success is pretty cool. Operators elsewhere might be wondering if they can imitate it, but WDC is not encouraging on this score. “It is difficult to imitate a place with snowfall alone in terms of revenue and expenditures,” said the WDC spokesperson we contacted. “This is because there are surprisingly few places with the right conditions, such as land price, amount of snow and collection methods, and stable collection of fuel needed for biomass power generation.”
有人告诉我们，WDC 已经为雪冷却系统和热利用循环系统申请了专利，但它们的应用可能有限，因为没有多少地方有足够的冬季积雪、适量的夏季阳光，以及本地数据需求和可再生能源的结合。
WDC has filed patents for snow cooling systems and heat utilization circulation systems, we were told, but they might have limited applications, because there simply aren’t many places which have enough winter snow, the right amount of summer sun, and a combination of local data demand and renewable power.
深 知 社
翻译：
Seaman
DKV（DeepKnowledge Volunteer）计划精英成员
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