Reveal the layout of Tencent's "East and West": how to promote low carbon in the production of distributed photovoltaic in the four hubs?

The comprehensive launch of the East and West calculation project has aroused the hot attention of the industry to the upstream and downstream of the data center industry chain. And the major Internet and cloud computing manufacturers have long been layout. Among them, Tencent has built data centers in Guizhou, Yangtze River Delta, Chengdu, Chongqing, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and other computing hub nodes.

Zhong Yuanhe, vice president of Tencent Cloud and general manager of Tencent IDC platform Department, said in an interview with Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that the launch of East and West calculation will further encourage enterprises with huge amounts of data to build their own data centers. The industrial policy of counting the east and the west, combined with the dual-carbon goal, will also become a booster for the green operation of the data center.

"now, as long as conditions permit, Tencent will try its best to buy green power and actively participate in the construction of green power." Zhong Yuanhe said.

The "calculation of the East and the West" has fallen into the four hubs.

Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Central Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Energy Administration jointly issued a circular, agreed to start the construction of national computing hub nodes in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, Chengdu and Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu and Ningxia, and planned 10 national data center clusters.

It is understood that in the Guizhou hub, Tencent has put into production the Gui'an Seven Star data center, covering a total area of about 470000 square meters, and opened the first phase of trial operation on May 29th, 2018.

A relevant person in charge of Tencent Cloud told reporters that this is a green and efficient disaster preparedness data center with "high concealment, high protection and high security". It is located in the tunnel with an area of more than 30, 000 square meters. According to the plan, the Gui'an data center will store 300000 servers.

In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei hub, Tencent has deployed two data centers in Huailai Ruibei and Dongyuan, each of which is planned to accommodate more than 300000 servers, both of which have been partially put into production.

In the Yangtze River Delta hub, Tencent owns Qingpu data center; in Chengdu-Chongqing hub, Tencent Cloud deployed two cloud computing data centers in Chongqing, one of which was put into operation in June 2018, with a capacity of 100000 servers. It is Tencent's fourth self-built large-scale data center cluster after Tianjin, Shanghai and Shenzhen-Shantou Cooperation Zone, and has become an important data center and network center for Tencent in southwest China. Since it was put into use, it has provided cloud services to more than 100 well-known enterprises at home and abroad, including Changan Automobile, Sohu and so on.

According to the person in charge of Tencent Cloud, the Chongqing Phase II project under construction, covering an area of 107mu and a construction area of 74000 square meters, officially started construction in April 2020, using Tencent's latest fourth-generation data center T-Block technology, and plans to create the first Tbase park of Tencent in southwest China. When completed, it will have the computing and storage capacity of 200000 servers, making it the largest single data center in western China.

As for the next step of planning, Zhong Yuanhe revealed that Tencent is in contact with Shaoguan in the Dawan area, but it has not yet been finalized.

A reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily learned that according to the planning of the National Development and Reform Commission, a cluster of Shaoguan data centers will be set up in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area hub, with the boundary of the starting zone as Shaoguan High-tech Zone. Recently, Xu Yongqiang, head of the Industrial Development Section of the Shaoguan Development and Reform Bureau, said in an interview with the media that the Shaoguan data center cluster will build 500000 standard racks and 5 million servers by 2025, with an investment of more than 50 billion yuan.

"in the Greater Bay area, we used to rent more operators, such as Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile. Shaoguan is designated as one of the key nodes in the data center. I believe that not only Tencent, but the entire industry that has demand for data center nodes in South China may pass. " Zhong Yuanhe said.

In the future, large enterprises may mainly be self-built.

After the introduction of the policy, what impact will it have on the construction direction of the data center?

Zhong Yuanhe pointed out that the previous layout of the data center was mainly based on two starting points, namely, user needs and local comprehensive factors.

"first of all, follow the needs of users, where the users are, where the needs are, there will be more points. Secondly, it is a comprehensive consideration of various local factors, such as matching, cost, land, power resources. Now, with clear policy guidance, the new data centers should be laid out as far as possible according to the policy direction. There will be a process of data migration between the original and the new data center, which is not achieved overnight, but lasts for a period of time and needs to evolve step by step. "

It is of great significance in many aspects to implement the project of "calculating the number from the east to the west" to promote the rational layout of the data center, optimize supply and demand, green intensification and interconnection. Zhong Yuanhe believes that the greatest significance is that it is conducive to the effective allocation of resources.

"if there is no policy guidance, enterprises mainly make their own decisions according to market behavior, which is prone to disorder and is not conducive to the deployment and effective allocation of resources. Now, after the policy specifies the place, people will have a tendency to huddle together, resulting in the economies of scale of data center construction. On the one hand, it is easy to manage, and on the other hand, the cost will be reduced. "

At present, there are mainly two major modes of domestic data center construction: self-construction and leasing. There is still some debate in the industry whether it is self-construction or leasing. Zhong Yuanhe believes that the launch of the calculation of East and West will further encourage enterprises with large amounts of data to adopt a self-built model.

"as long as it is on a scale, it must be more cost-effective than leasing. The speed of renting is fast, and you can rent resources as soon as you want them. Self-built data center, you can do a lot of technical optimization to reduce costs. My judgment is that in the future, small and medium-sized enterprises may use the cloud, or rent part of the IDC to build a hybrid cloud, while large enterprises will mainly build on their own. But it does not mean either or, because sometimes the demand is particularly exuberant and urgent, and there are still some broken scenes that still have to exist in the form of rent. "

The investment cycle of the data center is long, but the return is stable.

With the rapid development of the cloud computing industry and the inclusion of data centers in new infrastructure in 2020, the IDC market has ushered in an investment boom. Some data center experts pointed out that due to the lack of support for new applications and overheated investment, there was a glut in the data center market for a time.

In this regard, Zhong Yuanhe told Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily: "the relationship between supply and demand in the industry is fluctuating. For a period of time before, supply exceeds demand, and later supply exceeds demand. This is a periodic relationship. It is true that there are similar voices in the market after 2020, such as the rush of data centers as a hot spot, the influx of hot money and the personal demise of some partners. However, in terms of overall development, it should be said that the industry is still healthy. "

In terms of return on investment, Zhong Yuanhe pointed out that compared with many businesses, the investment cycle of data centers is indeed longer, but the rate of return is better than that of many traditional industries. "because it is a relatively stable rental return, this is the characteristic of the data center industry, and it is also the reason why many people are willing to invest in this industry."

"calculation of the East and the West" adds a booster to the green operation.

The launch of the project of "calculating the number from the east to the west" will speed up the construction of digital infrastructure. At the same time, the "calculation of the East and the West" project puts forward multi-level requirements for green energy conservation. According to the "implementation Plan for the Green and High-quality Development of New Infrastructure such as data Center and 5G" issued by the NDRC in conjunction with the Central Network Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Energy Administration, by 2025, the PUE of the new large and super-large data centers will be reduced to less than 1.3, the national hub nodes will be below 1.25, and the green and low-carbon level will be above 4A. The utilization rate of Western Digital centers has increased from 30 per cent to more than 50 per cent.

Zhong Yuanhe stressed that energy costs have always been the bulk of data center spending.

"if construction is not considered, energy costs may account for 70 or 80 per cent of the data center TCO (total cost of ownership). From the point of view of the overall cost, that is, the entire life cycle of the data center from completion to decommissioning, it accounts for about 40-50%. "

Tencent is constantly stepping up its green and low-carbon strategy. It is reported that the average PUE of Tencent's self-built data center has dropped below 1.25. According to its latest goal of carbon neutrality: to achieve comprehensive carbon neutralization of its own operations and supply chain no later than 2030, and to achieve 100% green electricity no later than 2030.

"now, as long as conditions permit, we try our best to buy green power; at the same time, we also actively participate in the construction of green power, with the upstream and downstream enterprises of green power, including power generation enterprises, green energy manufacturers, as well as Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other universities in energy research in-depth exchanges." Zhong Yuanhe said.

On February 22, Tencent Cloud Yizheng data center distributed photovoltaic project officially connected to the grid with full capacity. With a total installed capacity of 12.92 megawatts, the project is currently the largest data center roof distributed photovoltaic project in Jiangsu Province. After being connected to the grid, the average annual power generation of the project will exceed 12 million kilowatt-hours, which is equivalent to saving about 3800 tons of standard coal each year, corresponding to a reduction of about 10, 000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Tencent Cloud introduced that the distributed photovoltaic project of Yizheng data center adopts the grid-connected mode of "self-generation and self-use". The green clean power produced by more than 28000 high-efficiency monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic modules on the roof of the data center will be connected to the medium-voltage power warehouse of the data center after being processed by inverters, transformers and other flows. in the end, it will be used for the power cost of servers and air-conditioning systems in the data center.

At present, the energy saving and emission reduction of data center mainly starts from two aspects: power supply and distribution system and refrigeration. Zhong Yuanhe analyzed to Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily: "in terms of power supply and distribution, the data center sends the electricity of the substation to the server side through layers of degradation, giving the server a stable power supply; in terms of cooling, the data center needs to take away the heat generated by the server and other equipment. This part mainly depends on air conditioning. "

In Zhong Yuanhe's view, with the proposal of the dual-carbon goal, there will be more room for innovation in solar photovoltaic grid-connected, energy storage and data center cooling in the future.

"for example, if we put solar panels on the roof of the data center, there will be a lot of opportunities for innovation in how the electricity generated by solar energy should be incorporated into Electroweb and how it is managed. In addition, solar energy is available during the day and not at night, so it needs to be stored, which will bring energy storage considerations and tuning. East, West and double carbon add a boost to the entire green operation of the data center. "

In view of the difficulties that will be faced in the process of landing, Zhong Yuanhe believes that the acceptance of the whole industry is a major challenge. "for example, the acceptance of users, it takes a certain amount of time to complete the market education. Then there is the adaptation of the practitioner. If both the demand side and the practitioner can adapt, then it should be successful. "

In addition, the construction of the data center also needs a series of supporting environment support. "there is a stable and friendly business environment, which is probably the most important first point. Secondly, it is also crucial to have all kinds of objective factors and related supporting factors, such as network, talent, energy and other supporting factors. "