On May 15th, 2024, the Xiangshan Forum on Backup Power Supply for Data Centers was successfully held in Xiangshan, Beijing. Nearly 400 industry experts, data center users, and designers attended the conference, with over 160000 industry viewers watching live broadcasts online.
2024 marks the tenth year of the Xiangshan Forum on Backup Power in Data Centers, with attendees ranging from over 200 to around 400 today, and the topics discussed are constantly keeping up with the times. As Yang Hui, General Manager of Cummins China Power Business, mentioned in his speech, "The ten years of the Xiangshan Forum have been a decade of vigorous development of China's data centers. During this decade, we have gone from learning from outside to seeking internally, developing through questioning, and constantly innovating, and have embarked on a unique path for the development of data centers in China."
With the emergence of numerous large models represented by ChatGPT, 2023 witnessed the arrival of the first year of generative artificial intelligence, triggering an AI wave and driving changes in computing power, data centers, and energy. In response to changes, this year's Xiangshan Forum focuses on the energy brought by artificial intelligence and its impact on the backup power system of data centers. The attending experts express their opinions and jointly explore the future development path.
Zhong Jinghua, CDCC team leader, data center national standard preparer, and State Council special allowance expert, believes that generative artificial intelligence has a huge demand for infrastructure, and energy is the source of life for data centers. Promoting energy conservation and emission reduction on the energy side, as well as developing hydrogen energy, will be the future direction for the energy side of data centers.
In the future, renewable energy generation will inevitably become the mainstay of power generation. However, diesel generator sets still have great value in the booming development of new energy. Zhao Dexiu, the Director of Product Application Engineering for Cummins China Power Business, believes that diesel generator sets can use alternative fuels such as hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, and hydrogenated vegetable oil HVO for power generation, which can achieve smoothing out the impact of fluctuations in green energy on the power grid; On the other hand, using diesel as fuel can serve as a backup power source for the power grid, providing safety assurance for the grid.
Pu Tingmin, Deputy General Manager of the Data Center and Intelligent Business Unit of Zhongyuan International Engineering Co., Ltd., also believes that the standby diesel generator set is still a more reliable backup power supply device for the data center power supply system due to its mature and stable equipment, flexible and scalable nature, easy and controllable installation, and convenient energy supply. It is also a long-term reliable guarantee power source for on-site power generation such as triple power supply, fuel cells, and small nuclear reactors.
Although the momentum of new energy development is unstoppable, diesel generator sets still have great potential. Therefore, while developing new energy and new power systems, unit manufacturers are still continuously improving product quality, enhancing system stability and reliability, and ensuring the safety of the existing power system.
At present, some of the data center downtime is caused by diesel generator failures. Yang Lei, the operation and maintenance manager of Beijing Century Internet Broadband Data Center, believes that maintenance and AI preventive maintenance can greatly reduce the occurrence of failures, reduce the occurrence and impact of failures. In addition, AI fault localization and troubleshooting can reduce professional requirements, improve reliability, and reduce costs.
Cummins experts also shared with everyone how to use advanced computational fluid dynamics simulation analysis, noise analysis, etc. to transform experience into tools and provide customers with backup power system design to ensure the stability and safety of the entire power system; And provide professional technical support and comprehensive solutions for on-site testing, ensuring the smooth delivery of the project.
Cummins power experts shared their experience in testing power generation units in data center projects, including fast parallel connection of Cummins power units, parallel solutions and testing points for different brand units, continuous operation precautions, and PowerBloc ™ Excellent performance of the unit under high temperature environmental conditions and case analysis of overall system commissioning. And shared PowerBloc from an operations perspective ™ The practical application of containerized diesel generator sets in domestic and international markets has been demonstrated through examples to improve the efficiency of data center projects and help Chinese construction companies go global.
As an important core component of the generator set, Wang Jia, Technical Engineering and R&D Director of Cummins Generators, brings you Stanford's latest high-altitude application S9 series generators. This product increases the altitude application range from 2000m to 5000m, effectively solving the technical problems caused by thin air in high-altitude areas. It can be widely used in data centers in central and western China. Currently, Cummins Power QSK50, QSK60, and QSK78 series high-voltage generator sets are equipped with S9 series generators.
During the roundtable forum, the speakers also had a thorough discussion on the impact of new energy on data centers and backup power systems. They put forward their own opinions on the safety, availability, efficiency, and other aspects of low-carbon fuels that replace diesel. The on-site audience participated in the interaction through voting.
The Xiangshan Forum on Backup Power in Data Centers has been going through ten years without every wonderful and practical speech brought by all the speakers. At the forum, CDCC team leader, data center national standard preparer, and State Council special allowance expert Zhong Jinghua, and General Manager of Cummins China Power System Business Unit Xiang Yongdong presented the ten-year honor trophy to the representatives of previous speakers, thanking them for their contributions to the Xiangshan Forum.
Gathering cutting-edge industry trends, gathering industry experts and experts, standing at the forefront of the AI era, Cummins will continue to work with everyone to depict a more promising future in the field of backup power supply in data centers.