Harmonization between Renewable Energy and Cloud Computing towards Green Computing A Case Study: Data Center at The University Of Jordan

The use of high-performance computing in massive data centers (DC) and massive clusters is growing and consequently large number of processor chips is required. This increases their energy required to operate the DC and hence the amounts of emitted pollutants will increase as more electrical power is required to cover the increase in the power input. In addition more heat is generated leading to an increase in the devices and hence efficient cooling is required. To minimize these problems, green cloud computing has become essential. In this work, a study was conducted to investigate the potential of utilization solar PV energy and cloud computing in the data center at the University of Jordan. Various scenarios were suggested for a green cloud computing solution among which and to cut down the running cost of the power consumed, a net metering solar PV hybrid system was designed, such that this system will supply the annual power load. To further cut down the cost, the conventional servers were replaced by cloud servers as an alternative system. Using this alternative system, it was found that the total of required PV panels was reduced by almost 57%. Finally, it was found that the payback periods of both systems is 20 months.