FACILITIES power & cooling
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http://dcseurope.info/n/kqig
As green as the valleys of Wales
Formerly a 75,000 sq ft semiconductor plant, Next Generation Data’s Newport, Gwent facility is Europe’s largest data centre. To meet its CRC goal, the new data centre utilises 100% renewable energy and a high efficiency infrastructure to provide a PUE of 1.2. By Schneider Electric.
A
s the largest Tier 3+ facility in Europe, NGD Europe provides major global customers with a highly scalable and resilient data centre environment. The facility has its own 180 MVA mains supply from 100 percent renewable energy sources. To further enhance its green credentials, the data centre uses free cooling for a high proportion of the year, reducing energy requirements and costs together with associated carbon emissions.
Custom Energy Management System At the heart of NGD Europe’s energy and environmental efficiency strategy is a custom-designed Schneider Electric advanced power and energy management system.
From the outset, Schneider Electric recognised that in order to meet NGD’s exacting demands for high specification technology they needed to introduce a revolutionary management system. This new solution was uniquely designed for the Next Generation project. Data centres have historically used separate management systems to control building operations such as heating and lighting, alongside individual systems for the UPS and generators. The energy management specialists decided to break with tradition and implement an industry first – bringing together the building management system, the electronic management system, the PDUs and SCADA.
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www.dcseurope.info I March 2012
This unique system provides NGD with the means to closely monitor energy usage, highlighting any areas of concern where consumption is running at unexpected levels. This can then be addressed quickly and efficiently, ensuring a better service for customers of the data centre and potentially saving NGD and its customers thousands of pounds through reduced electricity costs and of course minimising the environmental impact of their operations.
Cooling Considerations
Cooling is perhaps the most critical system within any data centre as well as the most energy intensive. The sheer amount of servers within the space generates a vast amount of heat, and unless the temperature is regulated and kept cool, the servers are likely to overheat and malfunction. As the optimisation of its energy consumption and emissions is imperative to NGD, along with ensuring maximum resilience, Schneider Electric has had NGD Europe’s cooling solution specially tailored to help meet this primary ongoing objective. The cooling is directly in line with each customer requirement which provides the flexibility to deliver individual solutions from a standard 4kW rack moving up to 60kW per rack with resilience at a minimum of N+20%.
The key to NGD Europe’s ongoing cooling efficiency is in making the CRAC system as efficient as possible. Aisle temperatures are
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