Sustainability at GOB

Cloud services and AI solutions make a considerable contribution towards reducing our digital carbon footprint. In contrast to on-site solutions that entail a considerable amount of hardware in large computer centres, cloud infrastructures benefit our climate. With Microsoft Azure we help our customers to reduce their CO2 emissions considerably and to produce much less electrical waste.

Cloud solutions are scalable and can be matched to what is actually required and can therefore make wasting resources and excessively high energy consumption a thing of the past. As an official Microsoft solutions partner we deploy sustainable technologies, both within our company and at our customers' premises. Our partner, Microsoft, is not only actively committed to environmental issues but is also working continuously to actively reduce the CO2 emissions produced by its own computer centres. Companies can now use Power BI to monitor how green their cloud technologies are in an “Emissions Impact Dashboard” and see where optimization is required.

Heat exchangers, pumps and numerous pipes in our building’s control centre are the system’s brain. The control element connects the ventilation and heating system, which is based on geothermal technology, with the exterior blinds to form a holistic system. Temperature regulation and air intake are therefore continuously adapted to the actual weather conditions. This is achieved by sensors that continuously monitor interior and exterior temperatures, the wind speed and the position of the sun. The data collected allow the position of the exterior blinds and the output from the system to be adjusted accordingly. The higher the external temperature and the greater the penetration of heat, the more the building is cooled – and vice versa.

The control centre works in a similar way to a brain that is trained using typical past values so that it makes the right decisions at the right moment. First of all, sensor data has to be collected in order to do this so that the performance of the components can be adjusted to each other by hand. Our system was therefore able to learn patterns based on if/when statements that allow it to respond according to the situation. The control centre can now make decisions based on what is required – when to lower or raise the exterior blinds and which rooms need to receive more cooling or heat. Incidentally, the sustainable system continues to develop and has to learn to adapt to new and unusual weather conditions. This is achieved by making precision adjustments manually that help the control centre to update the principles on which it makes decisions.

In September 2021, our sustainable architecture was enhanced by introducing more green technology. Since then, we have a photovoltaic system on the roof and generate our own electricity. The system consists of 540 solar modules, an inverter and a powerful solar software that controls, monitors and analyses electricity generation.

Our photovoltaic system does not only provide power to GOB's building: it also supplies power to our EV charging points in the Europark business park. On days when conditions are ideal, we can generate more electricity than we use ourselves. When this happens, the excess electricity is fed into Krefeld’s electricity grid.