Will UPS disappear in the next decade? — What kind of UPS will future data centers need?
In 1972, during Nixon’s visit to China, a UPS was reportedly among the gifts transported by his presidential plane, marking the first appearance of a UPS in China. More than forty years later, the global UPS market has reached $7 billion, with the Chinese market exceeding 4 billion RMB. In recent years, the booming development of the internet industry and the large-scale construction of data centers have further increased the market demand for UPS. However, can today’s UPS truly adapt to the development of data centers, especially the future development of cloud data centers? Will power distribution equipment still look the same ten years from now? Will UPS eventually disappear? This is not unfounded worry. Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), born alongside computer technology, are increasingly unable to keep up with the development of the IT industry. Under the impact of various new technologies accompanying big data, the traditional UPS industry is facing a crisis.
The development of data centers
The development of data centers can be roughly divided into three stages from an infrastructure perspective:
The first phase mainly involves hosting and maintaining basic telecommunications resources and facilities such as venues, power supplies, network lines, and communication equipment. This is mostly provided by telecommunications companies, and their clients include industries and large enterprises.
The second phase was the rapid development of hosting and web hosting services brought about by the popularization of the Internet in the mid-to-late 1990s. This led to a corresponding increase in the centralized placement of IT equipment and the demands for maintenance. IDC (Internet Data Center) became the core of enterprise IT infrastructure.
The third stage began after 2000. With the emergence of technologies such as cloud computing and the application of high-performance IT equipment, data centers gradually evolved towards large-scale, virtualized, and green technologies. New data centers employ high-performance infrastructure, enabling on-demand resource allocation and reducing overall operating costs through large-scale operations and various new energy-saving technologies.
According to Gartner, by the end of 2010, there were 3.39 million data centers globally, accounting for approximately 1.3% of global electricity consumption. In the United States, this proportion is even higher. According to a report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 2011, data center energy consumption accounted for 2% of the total U.S. power grid, and this figure is projected to double every five years. Furthermore, according to ICT Research, in 2012, my country’s data center energy consumption reached 66.45 billion kilowatt-hours, accounting for 1.8% of the country’s total industrial electricity consumption that year. It is predicted that by 2015, my country’s data center energy consumption will reach 100 billion kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the annual power generation of the Three Gorges Dam.
In recent years, the development of data centers has gradually shown the following trends. Due to space limitations, this article will not go into the specific implementation and technical details, but will only analyze the various trends related to infrastructure, especially power supply and distribution systems.