Vodafone Romania uses advanced technologies to reduce its carbon footprint and protect the planet

Vodafone Romania uses advanced technologies to reduce its carbon footprint, increase its energy efficiency and protect the planet. The decision to purchase 100 percent green energy for its operations starting January 2020 has been complemented with a multi-year investment decision aiming to increase the energy efficiency of the company and to reduce its environmental impact. This investment program started in 2019 and it is already showing relevant results.

“We are celebrating the Planet Day through relevant results from our energy efficiency investment program. The first new and innovative cooling system for our data rooms went live on 1st April and it consumes eight times less energy as compared to the same period of last year. Our first site equipped with an innovative energy generator that uses hydrogen as fuel went live on 6 February 2020. We continue to innovate and deploy cutting-edge technologies to reduce our environmental impact and protect our planet,” said Catalin Buliga, Technology Director Vodafone Romania.

Vodafone Romania initiated in 2019 a multi-year investment program aiming to increase its energy efficiency and reduce its carbon footprint. For the main data rooms, the cooling systems have been the main priority, as they are responsible for 40-50 percent of the total energy consumption of these rooms. For sites, the focus is on energy generation through green solutions (solar panels, hydrogen based energy generators), combined with new efficient cooling systems in order to reduce the energy consumption from the public energy grid.

The first innovative cooling system went live on 1st April 2020 in one of the Vodafone Romania’s data centers. It consists in a revolutionary technology based on chilled water and PCM (Phase Change Material, a salt-based material that has the ability to absorb heat during the day and release it during the night in a complete passive way, without requiring any electrical energy, in order to maintain a constant temperature in the technical room).

Following the first measurements collected during April 1st – April 20th 2020, the electricity consumed by the cooling system has been eight times lower as compared to the last year’s same period. Other new innovative cooling systems based on chilled water, as well as on direct thermal management through smart sensors controlled by an artificial intelligence engine are under implementation in 2020 in other Vodafone Romania data rooms.