Assessment of the Energy Efficiency of Data Centers in Türkiye

Rapid developments in mobile and cloud technologies in particular are increasing the need for data storage today. This growing demand for data storage is leading to a rapid increase in the number of data centers. Data centers not only store organizations' digital information, but also process this data, play a role in its distribution, and assist in its management. In these centers, where numerous servers are housed together, security and sustainability are of critical importance to organizations, and any disruptions that may occur here can be extremely difficult to mitigate. Therefore, ensuring that data centers are designed to operate 24/7 and implementing the necessary precautions are essential requirements. The growing number of data centers has led to a significant increase in energy demand, both globally and in Türkiye. This situation poses serious problems for countries in terms of ensuring an energy supply and creating the necessary infrastructure. In recent years, the excessive energy consumption of data centers has become an area of intense research, and great efforts have been made to solve this problem. In this context, a new field of study called “Data Center Efficiency” has emerged. This study focuses on 18 data centers operating in Türkiye. Within the scope of the study, total facility power, IT equipment power, cooling capacity and total CO2 amount data were collected from these data centers. Using this data, energy efficiency values and power utilization efficiencies of the data centers were calculated. Based on the values obtained, the efficiency of data centers was compared and classified. In addition, several recommendations are presented to improve the energy efficiency of data centers.