On February 22, the Tencent Cloud Yizheng Data Center distributed photovoltaic project was officially connected to the grid at full capacity. With a total installed capacity of 12.92 MW, this project is the largest data center rooftop distributed PV project in Jiangsu Province. After grid connection, the project’s average annual power generation capacity will exceed 12 million kWh, which is equivalent to a yearly saving of about 3,800 tons of standard coal, corresponding to a reduction of about 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Tencent Cloud introduced the Yizheng data center distributed PV project to adopt the “self-generation and self-consumption” grid-connection method. The green and clean power produced by more than 28,000 high-efficiency monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic modules on the roof of the data center will be processed by inverters and transformers and then connected to the medium-voltage power warehouse of the data center, which will eventually be used for the power expenses of servers and air-conditioning systems in the data center, supporting the low-carbon development of the data center.
In addition to providing green power, the distributed PV will also form a shade on the roof of the data center to minimize the heat gathering in the data center due to direct sunlight, which will, in turn, reduce the air conditioning energy consumption of the data center in summer in terms of heat dissipation.
It is worth mentioning that, to reduce the damage to PV modules caused by dust pollution and thus affect the power generation efficiency, the Tencent Cloud Yizheng Data Center distributed PV project is also specially equipped with automatic PV module cleaning robots to realize the intuitive and efficient operation and maintenance of PV systems.
The construction of distributed PV in data centers is also one of the critical initiatives of Tencent’s carbon neutral strategy and an innovative green energy solution explored by Tencent Cloud in combination with the characteristics of data center T-Block technology. Previously, Tencent Cloud also made layouts in the comprehensive utilization of clean energy in data centers, centralized new energy adoption, and AI optimization of power utilization efficiency.
In January last year, Tencent announced its carbon-neutral plan, becoming one of the first Internet companies in China to launch a carbon-neutral project. At present, Tencent is promoting the whole value chain to achieve “net zero emissions” by 2030 through a series of initiatives such as technological innovation and management model creation from the perspectives of data centers, company operations, industrial assistance, and public welfare education.
According to public information, the Tencent Cloud Yizheng Data Center is Tencent’s largest self-built data center in East China. The data center will be officially opened in 2020 and plans to deploy more than 300,000 servers.