Investment summary:
Event: in February 2022, with the development and Reform Commission’s approval of the construction letter of the last four hub nodes such as Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Dawan District, the “East data and West calculation” project covering 8 hub nodes and 10 data center clusters was officially launched.
Why count East and West? With the developed economy in eastern China, the demand for Beijing Vastdata Technology Co.Ltd(603138) computing power is growing; The western region has abundant resources and abundant renewable energy represented by wind energy and hydropower. Today, with the increasing shortage of land and energy resources in the eastern region, the resource allocation and industrial structure can be optimized by transporting some data to the western region for calculation.
What are the “East numbers” that need to be “calculated in the west”? Eastern digital Western computing is a selective resource allocation. Some non real-time computing power requirements such as background processing, offline analysis, storage and backup will be “Western computing”, while data with strong real-time requirements such as industrial Internet, finance and disaster early warning will be calculated in the local data center.
What investment opportunities will arise in the long run?
In the future, the data center resources in the eastern region will become increasingly scarce, and the IDC industry pattern is expected to become centralized. With the guidance of data center construction to the west, data center resources in the East will become increasingly scarce. In addition, according to CDCC data, many data centers in the western region have a shelf rate of 30% – 40%, which does not meet the 65% standard. East digital West computing will first promote the shelf rate of existing data centers in the western region. In the context of carbon neutrality, a number of policies have been issued to control the energy consumption of data centers. It is expected that the future policies will still maintain a strict attitude towards IDC supply. Energy efficiency has become a new entry threshold for data centers. With the clearing of excess capacity, the industry pattern is expected to become centralized, and data center manufacturers with excellent energy consumption control will stand out.
Dual carbon has an obvious impact on the data center policy, and advanced refrigeration ushers in development opportunities. Except for the four economically developed regions of Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Dawan district and Chengdu Chongqing, other regions in this batch of construction hubs are rich in clean energy such as wind / hydropower In addition, the approval opinions have high restrictions on pue, requiring that the pue of data center cluster in Dawan district is less than 1.25, and that of Guizhou and other places is less than 1.2. At the same time, there are not low requirements on the shelf rate. It can be seen that under the dual carbon background, the intensive green development orientation of policy control supply and avoiding resource waste is obvious, and the control of energy consumption of data center is becoming stricter. With the continuous completion of access and energy consumption monitoring of multiple data centers, the direction of low-carbon operation of data centers is becoming more and more determined. HVAC equipment is crucial to energy consumption, and investment opportunities for advanced refrigeration are highlighted. The energy consumption generated by the air conditioner in the machine room accounts for 40% of the total energy consumption of the data center. Starting from the cooling end is the most effective way to reduce energy consumption. Advanced technologies such as indirect evaporative refrigeration, liquid cooling and seawater cooling can significantly reduce the level of pue. It is expected that there will be great opportunities in the next five years.
It is recommended to pay attention to:
1) third party IDC with scarce resources & excellent operation and maintenance capability. Beijing Sinnet Technology Co.Ltd(300383) (Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei), Shanghai Athub Co.Ltd(603881) (Zhangjiakou and Yangtze River Delta), Shanghai Baosight Software Co.Ltd(600845) (Zhangjiakou and Yangtze River Delta), Wanguo data (comprehensive in many places).
2) upstream HVAC equipment that plays a key role in data center energy consumption.
Risk tip: the policy promotion is less than expected, and the cloud capital expenditure is less than expected.
