风云再起：数据中心高压直流供电卷土重来

风云再起：数据中心高压直流供电卷土重来

DC
distribution - the second coming

March 20, 2024 By  Peter Judge 

译 者 说

数据中心已成为现代社会的基础设施之一，它们支撑着互联网服务、云计算和大数据分析等关键功能。然而，数据中心的能耗问题也日益受到关注，本文将探讨高压直流供电在数据中心如何卷土重来，分析直流供电的优势、挑战以及它如何适应现代数据中心的需求，为读者提供一个全面的视角，理解直流供电在数据中心领域的复兴和未来潜力。

曾经在2010年代被摒弃的建筑运行直流电的想法，现在可能即将卷土重来。

Dismissed in the 2010s, the idea of running direct current through your building could be set to make a comeback.

早期的数据中心由大量地板下的电缆供电。为了使系统更易于修改和维护，并消除阻碍气流的电缆束，现在通常将通往机架的电缆压缩成“母线”——一种单一的实心导体，悬挂在顶部，携带足够的交流电能来运行一排机架上的所有设备。

Early data
centers were powered by masses of cables under the raised floor. To make the
system easier to modify and maintain, and get rid of the skeins of cables that
blocked airflow, the cables to the racks are now more usually condensed into a
“bus bar” - a single solid conductor that runs overhead, carrying enough AC
power to run all the equipment on a row of racks.

机架通过“插接箱”供电，这些插接箱简单地连接到母线上，然后连接到机架中的PDU。

Racks are fed via “tap-off boxes” which simply attach to the bus bar, and connect down to the PDUs in the racks.

“三相配电通常使用交流母线，”Equinix的现场首席技术官My Truong说。他提到Starline是“数据中心最常见的三相配电母线系统之一。”

“AC buses are
used pretty regularly for three-phase distribution,” says My Truong, field CTO
at Equinix. He references Starline as “one of the most prevalent bus systems
out there for three-phase power distribution in data centers.”

“悬挂母线系统消除了配电列头柜的需求，从而为服务器机架提供了更多的可用空间，”Vertiv的母线业务总监Marc Dawson在博客中解释说。“插接箱可以放置在母线的任何点，因此消除了数英里的电源线。”

“Overhead bus
bar systems eliminate the need for remote power panels, resulting in more
usable space for server racks,” explained Marc Dawson, director for bus bars at
Vertiv, in a blog. “Tap-off boxes can be placed at any point along the bus bar
therefore eliminating miles of power whips.”

但是，母线中传输的是什么呢？传统上是交流电。如果这可以被直流电取代会怎样？

But what goes
through the bus bar? Traditionally it has been alternating current. What if
that could be replaced with DC?

直流配电-2010年代的风行一时？

DC distribution
- a fad of the 2010s?

在2010年代，一些数据中心完全使用直流电运行。目标是消除在电力传输过程中多次转换时发生的能源损失，这些转换包括交流电用于传输，直流电用于为UPS电池充电和运行IT设备。

In the 2010s, a
number of data centers were built which operated with DC power throughout. The
goal was to eliminate the energy losses that took place when power was
converted multiple times between AC for transmission, and DC for charging the
UPS batteries and running the IT.

“最初在21世纪初提出的直流配电理念是基于替代建筑内的‘传统’交流配电安排，”DCD学院讲师Andrew Dewing解释说。

“The DC
distribution ideas which first raised their head in the late noughties were
based on the replacement of 'conventional' AC distribution arrangements within
the building,” explains DCD Academy instructor Andrew Dewing.

Intel尝试使用400V直流电在数据中心内分配电力，但直流配电的主要倡导者可能是Validus DC Systems，这是一家由Rudy Kraus在2006年创立并在2011年被ABB收购的公司。

Intel
experimented with using 400V DC to distribute power around the data center, but
the leading proponent of DC distribution was probably Validus DC Systems, a
company founded by Rudy Kraus in 2006 and bought by ABB in 2011.

“直流电是所有电力电子设备中的原生电源。每个CPU、内存芯片和硬盘驱动器都消耗直流电。交流电是基于100年前设定的标准而被选择为电源路径的——在电力电子设备出现之前50年——”Rudy Kraus在2011年说。

Direct current is the native power resident in all power
electronics. Every CPU, memory chip, and disk drive consume direct current
power. Alternating current was chosen as a power path based on criteria set 100
years ago, 50 years before power electronics existed——Rudy Kraus, 2011

正如Dewing所解释的：“ABB试图推动的理念是利用从UPS直流母线到负载的直流配电，允许移除UPS的逆变器阶段。理念是通过直流配电，可以移除许多可能使用的逆变器，从而节省能源。”

As Dewing
explains: “The ideas that ABB tried to push utilized the idea of DC
distribution from the UPS DC bus downwards to the load allowing the removal of
the inverter stage of the UPS. The idea was that by distributing at DC you
could remove a lot of transformers that might be used and save energy.”

一些全球旗舰数据中心尝试了这种方法。“我们建造了三个值得一提的数据中心，”现为VIE Technologies首席商务官的Kraus说：“一个在雪城大学与IBM合作，一个在瑞士苏黎世附近的Lenzburg为HP建造，还有一个在新泽西州为摩根大通建造。”

Some flagship
data centers around the world tried it out. “We built three centers of
mention,” says Kraus, now chief commercial officer at VIE Technologies: “One at
Syracuse University with IBM, one in Lenzburg [near Zurich, Switzerland] for
HP, and one for JPMorgan Chase in New Jersey.”

还有其他报道，包括一个在日本北海道石狩市的数据中心。

Others were
reported, including one in Ishikari City, Hokkaido, Japan.

Validus以380V的电压分配电力，并声称直流配电可以产生巨大的节省。Validus表示，使用直流电的2.5MW数据中心将节省高达25%的能源，按照2009年的价格每年节省300万美元。

Validus
distributed power at 380V, and claimed that DC distribution could produce huge
savings. Validus said 2.5MW data center using DC would use up to 25 percent
less energy, saving $3 million a year at 2009 prices.

在电气配电系统中会有巨大的节省，设备减少50%，安装减少30%，并且只需要一半的物理空间。有了这些简化，该公司承诺它也将更加可靠。

There would be
big savings in the electrical distribution system, with equipment down by 50
percent, installation by 30 percent, and it would only need half the physical
space. With those simplifications, it would also be more reliable, the company
promised.

其他好处包括不再需要同步电力系统。由于电压没有周期性变化，就没有谐波，设备也不会出现同步问题。

Other benefits
include no longer having to synchronize power systems. With no cyclic variation
in voltage, there are no harmonics, and no problem with devices getting out of synch.

“你可以在那个母线上放置任何你想要的直流设备，”Kraus说。“你可以使用燃料电池，你可以使用直流UPS，你可以使用整流器，你可以使用电池，你可以使用风力发电机。所有这些都非常简单。”

“You could
literally put anything you want that’s DC on that bus,” says Kraus. “You could
do fuel cells, you could do DC UPS, you could do rectifiers, you could do
batteries, you could do windmills. And all this stuff is very, very simple.”

尽管有所有这些好处，ABB在2011年表示它收购了一项“突破性”技术，但行业并不信服。

With all these
benefits, ABB said it had bought a "breakthrough" technology in 2011,
but the industry was not convinced.

安全第一

Safety first

在反对者中，有影响力的Facebook工程师James Hamilton对所提出的说法表示怀疑：“我详细阅读的营销材料将出色的HVDC设计与非常差的交流电设计进行比较。可预测的节省大约是30%。不幸的是，好的交流电设计与差的交流电设计之间的差异也在30%左右。”

Among the
naysayers, the influential Facebook engineer James Hamilton cast doubt on the
claims made: “The marketing material I’ve gone through in detail compare[s]
excellent HVDC designs with very poor AC designs. Predictably the savings are
around 30 percent. Unfortunately, the difference between good AC and bad AC
designs is also around 30 percent.”

Hamilton估计效率改进可能高达5%，但直流系统的规模小将使设备更昂贵，同时“设备可用性降低，交货时间更长，并且在某些地区获得许可和审批的管辖问题也更复杂，耗时更长。”

Hamilton
reckoned the efficiency improvements might be as much as five percent, but the
small market for DC systems would make the equipment more expensive equipment,
along with “less equipment availability and longer delivery times, and somewhat
more complex jurisdictional issues with permitting and other approvals taking
longer in some regions.”

另一个问题是安全。

Another issue
was safety.

“直流电力分配的一个主要缺点是实现安全的成本更高，”美国超导公司（AMSC）的Ed Wylie说。

“A big drawback
with DC power distribution is that safety is much more expensive to achieve,”
says Ed Wylie, of American Superconductor (AMSC).

他认为这是一个普遍的电气原理。交流电开关可以更小，因为它们的电流会振荡并定期通过零点，在这点上，很容易物理移动开关触点。

He sees this as
a general electrical principle. AC switches can be less bulky, because their
current oscillates and regularly passes through zero, at which point it is easy
to physically move the switch contact.

“对于直流电，”Wylie说，“电流可能会持续，你很快就会烧毁开关。如果你看看直流开关和交流开关的等效额定值，一个是非常庞大，另一个是小巧紧凑。”

“With DC,” says
Wylie, “the current might be maintained, and you burn out the switch fairly
quickly. If you look at the equivalent rating of a DC switch, and an AC switch,
one is monstrous, and the other is small and compact.”

2018年，OmniOn的Vito Savino受雇于ABB并看到了Validus的试验数据中心。他告诉DCD：“我去了纽约雪城大学的一个小数据中心，那是Validus做的试点。”

In 2018,
OmniOn’s Vito Savino was employed by ABB and saw Validus’ trial data center. “I
went to a small data center in Syracuse University, New York, that was kind of
the pilot that Validus had done,” he told DCD. “And it was appropriate
for it to be in a lab environment.”

像Wylie一样，Savino说直流配电因缺乏安全设备而被推迟。“当你在高于SELV（安全超低电压）72V的高电压下运行直流电时，如果有人不小心触摸到错误的地方，他们可能会真的受伤。”

Like Wylie,
Savino says DC distribution was held back by the lack of safety devices. “When
you're running DC at a high voltage, over the SELV [Safety Extra Low Voltage]
level of 72V, you can really hurt somebody if they happen to touch the wrong
places.”

当时，他说：“应该启动的保护装置并不可用。它们还没有为直流电制造，因此它是一种实验，而且进行得并不顺利。它没有得到很好的接受，因为没有人想靠近那种电压。当我们谈论直流电压时，48V是一个安全电压，除非它背后有大量的电流。”

At that time, he
says: “The protection devices that are supposed to kick in were not available.
They weren't made yet for DC, and therefore it was an experiment, and it did
not go very well. It was not well received because nobody wanted to be around
that voltage. When we talk about DC voltages, 48V is a safe voltage, unless
there’s a lot of current behind it.”

正如Savino所说：“从安全的角度来看，我们希望48V被限制在机架内部，只有技术人员才能看到它，他们最接近它的是将断路器插入封装在机柜中的电源分配单元。”

As Savino puts
it: “When we think about it from a safety perspective, we want that 48V to be
contained inside of the rack where only a technician would ever be able to see
it and the closest they get to it is putting a breaker into the power
distribution unit that is encapsulated in the cabinet.”

“有很多人类抵抗，”他说，澄清他所说的是社会对采用这种技术的抗拒，而不是触电，并说这是有道理的。

“There's a lot
of human resistance,” he says, clarifying that he is talking about social
reluctance to adopt the technology, rather than electrocution, and saying that
such is justified.

Validus DC
Systems founder Rudy Kraus– Rudy Kraus

Kraus 说：“在我看来，这不是一个安全问题。如果你看看海军、空军和电话公司，他们都在使用直流电。”

Kraus says:
“It's not a safety issue, in my opinion. If you look at the Navy, the Air
Force, and the phone company. They are all using it.”

结果表明，这个想法在国际上的应用也是有限的，Dewing 说：“在美国的电力系统中有很多交流电压等级，而且当时对使用隔离变压器等采取了更为保守的方法。虽然理论上可能适用于美国，但在世界其他地区，电力分配要简单得多，只有两三个电压等级（例如，英国主要是 132kV、11kV、400V）。”

As it turned
out, the idea also had limited application internationally, according to
Dewing: “In the US electrical systems there were many AC voltage levels and, at
the time, a more conservative approach to the use of isolation transformers,
for example. Whilst the theory might have worked for the US it was never viable
in other parts of the world where electrical distribution was much simpler with
only two or three voltage levels (e.g. UK mostly has 132kV, 11kV, 400V).”

Dewing 还表示，建筑内的直流配电可能也难以提供足够的电力：“建议的直流电压等级（大约 500-700V 直流）将需要在紧张的地方占用非常大的布线空间。”

DC distribution
in the building could also have struggled to deliver enough power says Dewing:
“The voltage levels of DC suggested (circa 500-700V DC) would have necessitated
very large cabling requirements in a world where space was at a premium.”

新的电流战争

The new current
wars

Kraus 认为这些反对意见源于简单的固执：“交流电的人反对它。这回到了爱迪生-西屋电气公司的时代。那时，直流电和交流电之间有一场重大的斗争。”

Kraus thinks
these objections were born out of simple stubbornness: “The AC guys fought it.
It was back to the Edison-Westinghouse days. There was a major fight between DC
and AC.”

他指的是 1890 年代，当时爱迪生推动直流电分配给电网，但最终输给了西屋电气公司的交流电设备，爱迪生说这是不安全的。

He’s referring
to the 1890s, when Edison pushed DC distribution for the grid, but ultimately
lost out to Westinghouse’s AC equipment, which Edison said was unsafe.

“随着时间的推移，我们每天都被越来越多的直流电产品所包围，”他引用了灯光、电动汽车等作为例子。“事实是，我认为我是对的。我认为直流电将继续增长。”

“As time goes,
we're surrounded more and more every day with DC products,” he says, citing
lights, electric cars, and more. “The fact of the matter is, I think I was
right. I think that DC will continue to grow.”

最终，ABB 并没有发展 Validus 技术。“他们那时换了 CEO，决定不在这方面做太多事情，”Kraus 说。

In the end, ABB
did not develop the Validus technology. “They had a switch of CEOs at that
point, and decided not to do much with it,” says Kraus.

“老实说，我不认为 ABB 在收购 Validus 方面学到了很多东西，”Savino 说。“它在产品化和市场营销方面就这样消失了。”

“Honestly, I
don't think ABB learned much with the Validus acquisition,” says Savino. “It
kind of just went away in terms of productizing IT and marketing it.”

尽管在 2010 年后，直流配电似乎因为通过建筑物运行直流电压看起来太冒险和不寻常而逐渐消失，但自那以后已经发生了一些重大变化。

DC distribution
may have faded out of data centers after 2010, when it seemed too risky and
unusual to run DC voltages through the building, But there have been some big
changes since then.

直接转向直流

Go Direct

首先，现在的机架可能配备了直流母线。其次，数据中心可能能够从新能源如太阳能电池阵列或燃料电池中获取电力，这两种都以直流形式提供电力。

Firstly, racks
these days may be fitted with DC bus bars. Secondly, data centers may be able
to draw their power from new sources like solar arrays or fuel cells, both of
which deliver power in DC form.

一些运营商担心电网的可靠性，或者相信他们可以自己更好地发电，因此他们正在转向具有现场电源的微电网。这些来源，包括氢燃料电池和太阳能电池阵列，以直流电形式提供电力。

Concerned about
the reliability of the grid, or believing they can generate power better
themselves, some operators are moving to microgrids with on-site power sources.
These sources, including hydrogen fuel cells, and solar arrays, provide power
as DC.

当数据中心以直流电形式获取电力，并用它来运行直流机架时，交流电阶段看起来就像是系统中的一小部分，这使得一些人重新考虑跳过交流电环节的想法。

When data
centers draw power in as DC, and use it to run DC racks, the AC stage looks
like a smaller part of the system, and that’s making some people look again at
the idea of skipping the AC part of the loop.

“我喜欢说我们‘货物崇拜’技术前进，直到它对我们不再起作用。我认为我们已经把交流电‘货物崇拜’到了极致——”My Truong，Equinix。

I like to say we 'cargo-cult' tech forward until it stops
working for us. I think we have cargo-culted AC forward as far as we can——My
Truong, Equinix

“A Bloom 燃料电池是一个很好的例子，”Truong 说。“它们自然地直接从电池中产生 380V 高压直流电。但由于我们在大多数地方都以交流电为中心，我们把直流电转换为 480V 三相交流电，然后把它输送到建筑物里，然后再至少转换一次回到直流电通过 UPS，然后再转换为交流电送到 IT 设备！”

“A Bloom fuel
cell is a really great example,” says Truong. “Those naturally produce 380V
HVDC right out of the cell. But because we're so AC-centric in most localities,
we DC-AC convert that to 480V AC three-phase, run it into the building, and
then reconvert it back to DC at least once to go through UPS, and then
reconvert it to AC to send it to the IT equipment!”

那 380V 直流电可以相对容易地直接送到 IT 设备：“你可能不知道的一些技巧。一个标准的 240V 电源适配器可能会方便地接受 380V 高压直流输入，只是没有这样认证。”

That 380V DC
power could be sent straight to the IT with relatively little effort: “There
are tricks you may not be aware of. A standard 240V power supply will probably
conveniently ingest a 380V HVDC input with minimal friction. It's just not
certified that way.”

他明确指出：“如果我们有电源适配器可以自然地接受 380V 高压直流电，没有什么可以阻止我们直接从燃料电池中输出电力，而不是在途中承受那三个、八个或十个百分比的转换损失，并拥有一个相对更高效的整体电力分配。”

He spells it
out: “If we have power supplies that could naturally take 380V HVDC, there's
nothing preventing us from passing that power directly out of a fuel cell, not
taking that three, eight, or 10 percent conversion loss along the way, and
having a relatively more efficient overall power distribution.”

他说，这不仅有助于提高能源效率：“直流总线也有一些其他的好处。因为它是直流电，你不需要进行相位同步，你不需要做很多交流电的技巧来同步电源。所以你实际上可以让太阳能电池阵列供电到总线上，并用电池系统承担系统的一些负担。我们有很多机会在转向直流电总线时重新设计。”

It doesn’t just
help energy efficiency, he says: “Bussing DC also has some nice other
artifacts. Because it is a DC bus, you don't have to phase sync, you don’t have
to do a bunch of AC antics to synchronize up supplies. So you could actually
have a solar array feed into the bus and pick up some of the slack of the
system with battery systems. There's a lot of opportunity for us to go
rearchitect when we go to DC buses.”

传统的交流电配电只是重复以前的做法，而没有试图理解其背后的基本原理，就像“货物崇拜”，Truong 说：“我喜欢说我们把交流电继续沿用以往的习惯，直到它对我们不再起作用。我认为我们已经到了行业的一个拐点，我们已经把交流电‘货物崇拜’到了极致。” 

Traditional AC
power distribution simply repeats what has been done before without trying to
understand the underlying principles, like a “cargo cult,” says Truong: “I like
to say we cargo-cult it forward until the thing stops working for us. And I
think we're at that inflection point in the industry, where we have
cargo-culted AC forward as far as we can.”

然而，在托管和企业数据中心内部进行变革是困难的。“在 Equinix，我们今天对交流电分配非常熟悉，”Truong 说。“要提倡直流电分配机制，我们需要客户来找我们说‘我们需要 480V配电，我们想这样做。’” 

It’s tough to
make changes inside colocation and enterprise data centers, though. “At
Equinix, we are very comfortable with AC distribution today,” says Truong. “To
advocate for a DC distribution mechanism, we would have to have the customer
come to us and say ‘we need 480-volt distribution, and we want to do it this
way.’”

超大规模服务提供商拥有端到端的设计，但其他人没有这种奢侈，他说：“我们如何与最终用户合作，认识到这样做的好处，与我们的经典数据中心设计相比？” 

Hyperscaler
providers own the design end-to-end, but others don’t have that luxury, he
says: “How do we collaborate with the end user and recognize the benefit to
doing this, versus our classic data center designs?”

托管客户在看到直流配电看起来是一个安全的选择，并且得到流行标准的支持之前，不会愿意转向直流电分配，这就是 Truong 作为 Open19 组（现在称为 SSIA）主席的另一个工作目标。

Colocation
customers won’t be willing to go to DC distribution until it looks like a safe
option, backed by popular standards, and that is what Truong aims to do in his
other job as chair of the Open19 group, now known as SSIA.

“对我们来说要打破固有的模式，我们必须同时打破很多东西，并让客户习惯于打破它，”他说。“但我们需要向他们展示一些价值。目前对我们来说这非常困难。”

“For us to break
the paradigm, we have to break a bunch of things simultaneously, and get
customers comfortable with breaking it,” he says. ”But we need to show some
value to them. And that is very hard for us right now.”

在加利福尼亚重新思考

Rethinking in
California

一个有自由重新思考事物的人是长期数据中心简化者 Yuval Bachar，Open19 组的创始人，现在在加利福尼亚的初创公司 ECL。

One man with the
freedom to rethink things is long-time data center simplifier Yuval Bachar, the
original founder of the Open19 group, now at California-based startup ECL.

ECL 已经建立了一个由现场氢燃料电池供电的 1MW 数据中心，并提议在客户有氢气供应的地方为客户建造更多。

ECL has built a
1MW data center powered by on-site hydrogen fuel cells and is proposing to
build more for customers wherever there is a supply of hydrogen.

每个设施都是为一个客户建造的，客户可以选择他们想要的激进程度。因为，Bachar 说，设施内部的电力分配将根据客户的要求设计。

Each facility
will be built for one customer, and that customer can choose how radical they
want to be. That’s because, Bachar says, the power distribution inside the
facility will be the customer’s choice.

“我们实际上可以直接将直流电推送到数据中心，数据中心内部的分配基于客户的要求。对我们来说，直流电更好，因为我们节省了转换阶段。但如果客户希望我们实际上在内部使用直流电，我们会为客户进行转换。我们的设计能够做到任何一种。”

“We can actually
push DC directly to the data center, and distribution inside the data center is
based on customer requirements. For us, DC is better because we save stages of
conversion. But if the customer wants us to actually use DC inside then we do the
conversion for the customer. Our design is capable of doing either.”

Bachar 对直流电的历史以及围绕它的安全问题非常了解。ECL 设计可以包括变压器进行调节，以及直流-直流转换器：“我们实际上可以驱动任何电压的直流电，我们可以驱动交流电，我们也可以驱动它们的混合。如果你想，你可以有一半直流电，一半交流电。” 

Bachar is well
aware of the history of DC, and the safety concerns around it. The ECL design
can include transformers for conditioning, along with DC-to-DC converters: “We
can actually drive any voltage of DC, we can drive AC, and we can drive a blend
of them as well. You can have half DC, half AC if you want.”

对他来说，关键问题是在机架密度高时，设计将需要在穿过建筑物的分配母线中需要多少电流。如果是在低电压下分配，那么供应多个机架所需的电流将是“具有挑战性的”，他说。

For him, the key
concern is how much current the design will require in the distribution bus
bars that go through the building when rack densities get high. If it is
distributed at a low voltage, then the amount of current required to supply
multiple racks would be “challenging,” he says.

“原因是，以我们每个机架使用的功率，我们将不得不驱动到分配系统的是数千安培，在低电压下。你可能接近 10,000 到 15,000 安培。这需要相当特殊的铜分配。”

“The reason for
that is, at the amount of power that we use per rack, we're going to have to
drive into distribution system 1000s of amps at low voltage. You could be close
to 10,000 to 15,000 amps. That requires pretty special copper distribution.”

我们可以直接将直流电推送到数据中心，数据中心内部的分配基于客户的要求。对我们来说，直流电更好，因为我们节省了转换阶段。我们的设计能够做到任何一种。

We can push DC
directly to the data center, and distribution inside the data center is based
on customer requirements. For us, DC is better because we save stages of
conversion. Our design is capable of doing eitherYuval Bachar, ECL

他在这方面并没有错。这么多的电流将需要精心设计的厚铜母线，电阻将是一个问题。以至于至少有一组学者建议使用高温超导体。

He’s not wrong
there. That much current will require carefully designed thick copper bus bars,
and resistance will be a problem. So much so that at least one group of
academics has suggested using high-temperature superconductors.

在现实世界中，使用普通的铜导体，高电流意味着“你会得到热量，可能会产生火花，”Bachar 说。

In the real
world, with regular copper conductors, high currents mean “you're going to get
heat, and you can get sparking,” says Bachar.

他的解决方案是分配更高的电压，这意味着更合理的电流水平，然后在机架处降低电压。

His answer is to
distribute higher voltages, which means a more reasonable level of current, and
then convert the voltage down at the racks.

“我们试图将电压提高到安全的程度，”他说。“对于 1MW，我们以 800V、750V 或 700V 推送。那是大约 2000A，这是合理的。如果增加五倍或六倍，那将变成一场噩梦。”

“We're trying to
put the voltage high enough to be safe,” he says. “For 1MW, we push at 800V,
750V, or 700V. That’s about 2000A, which is reasonable. To increase that five
times or six times, that is becoming a nightmare.”

推动标准

Pushing for
standards

像 Truong 和Bachar 这样的先锋乐于突破界限，有时事情比人们想象的要容易。例如，Savino 记得他的公司 OmniOn 曾经是通用电气（GE）的一部分，并发现交流电设备可以在直流电上工作。

Pioneers like
Truong and Bachar are happy to push boundaries, and sometimes things are easier
than one might expect. For instance, Savino remembers that his company, OmniOn,
was once part of General Electric (GE) and found that AC equipment worked on
DC.

“GE 在交流电分配上非常强大，我们了解到我们可以使用他们的交流母线方案，”他说。我们所要做的就是从 UL [Underwriters’ Laboratories] 获得直流电级别的评级，我们就可以使用相同的母线来传输直流电。

“GE is very big
in AC distribution, and we learned that we could use their AC bus bar scheme,”
he says. All we had to do was get a rating for it from UL [Underwriters’
Laboratories], at a DC level, and we could use that same bus bar for carrying
DC.”

然而，除非直流电方案得到 UL 证书和标准的广泛支持，否则更广泛的市场不会走出传统做法。

However, the
broader market is not going to step outside of conventional practices until DC
schemes are broadly backed by UL certificates and standards.

Truong 认为一致性可能会说服更多的人来看一看。“我们如何带来足够一致的标准，以解耦历史上从未解耦的各个部分，并允许各个组织真正在可持续性因素上追踪优势？”

Truong thinks
consistency might persuade more people to have a look at it. “How do we bring a
consistent enough standard that decouples enough of the pieces that were
historically not decoupled, and allows the various organizations to really
trace advantages on the sustainability factor overall?”

说服人们采用新事物将取决于他们看到商业价值，Truong 说 - 他看到了一个有希望的方式来提供这种价值：“现在，我们展示商业价值的机会真的在于可持续性。坦率地说，我不认为大多数组织能够在不彻底改变他们对事物的思考方式的情况下实现他们的可持续性目标。”

Persuading
people to adopt something new will depend on them seeing business value, Truong
says - and he sees a promising way to deliver that: “Right now, our opportunity
to show business value is really on sustainability. Frankly, I don't believe
that most organizations are going to be able to meet their sustainability goals
without radically changing the way they think about things.”

他还知道他必须说服原始设备制造商接受标准化的方法：“原始设备制造商对采用这种方法有些犹豫，因为他们没有看到客户基础。我们在那里有一个循环要打破，以及让原始设备制造商认识到服务器设计中的可互操作标准实际上对他们最有利。我认为他们仍然在定制产品中看到价值，他们可能需要一点时间来重新思考他们当前的产品价值。”

He also knows he
has to persuade OEMs to accept a standardized approach: “OEMs are
semi-reluctant to adopt this because they don't see a customer base for it. We
have a bit of a loop to break through there, as well as getting OEMs to
recognize that interoperable standards in server designs are actually to their
best benefit. I think that they still see value in customized products, They'll
probably take a little while to rethink their current product value.”

回到 2011 年，当亚马逊数据中心资深人士 James Hamilton 驳斥直流电分配时，他认为它最终可能会突破：“整个行业继续学习，我认为高压直流电配电最终可能成为现代数据中心更常见的选择。”

Back in 2011,
when Amazon data center veteran James Hamilton dismissed DC distribution, he
felt it might break through in the end: “The industry as a whole continues to
learn, and I think there is a good chance that high voltage DC distribution
will end up becoming a more common choice in modern data centers.”

他可能是对的。

He may turn out
to be right.

Kraus 目前处于半退休状态，但如果直流配电重新流行起来，他准备重新回到行业：“我们证明了一些非常有趣的事情。我一直相信，问题是它需要多久才能再次流行起来？”

Kraus is in
semi-retirement, but he’s ready to get back into the industry if DC
distribution makes a comeback: “We proved out some pretty interesting things.
And I always believed the question was, how long would it take to come around
again?”

来源：深知社