FEATURE
components and rare metals, materials that can pollute the environment. In addition, there are fumes from the melting of plastics surrounding the electrical cables that could cause harmful airborne emissions for anyone present, as well as causing further risk of contamination and pollution.
What can be done about the risk of
an electrical fire? Although the causes of a fire affecting a building can be multiple, human negligence, thermal or even electrostatic or chemical, nearly a quarter of those recently assessed were due to a defective electrical installation: a short- circuit, an overcurrent or a surge.
It is therefore incumbent on data centres to launch regular compliance audits, in order to keep up with successive regulations and to insist on prevention. For example, they can implement better fire detection systems and use more modern technologies such as thermal cameras to detect heat islands.
Among other innovative power and electrical connection technology solutions, data centres can look to flexible, lugless conductors that are not yet widely used in the industry combined with high-strength, low-smoke, halogen-free, flame-retardant thermoplastic insulation. Ideal alternatives to heavy gauge cables or rigid copper rods, these flexible, electrolytically tinned copper insulated rods reduce the contact area with copper conductors and can be used even in environments exceeding 100°C - essential for data centres.
Halogen-free, flame retardant insulation (glow-wire tested at 960°C to IEC 60695-2 and self-extinguishing to UL 94-V0) provides these solutions with benefits such as reduced toxic smoke (to IEC 60754-1, IEC 62821-1 and UL 2885) and fire spread, with the ultimate goal of preserving the electrical installation.
In addition to the obvious safety gains, these systems also offer several advantages, including cost savings, as they eliminate the need to install the terminal lugs required for wire connections. Compact and easy to maintain, these solutions also reduce the risk of human error. Finally, they optimise the design of electrical connections by multiplying and improving the possibilities of connection.
Standards, fire prevention systems, innovative electrical solutions: all the conditions are in place to enable data centre owners to upgrade their sites and better control fire risks. This is all the more important in view of the fact that in the future, new sectors such as banking will have an increasing requirement for data centre use and will be even more demanding in terms of the security of the centres where their data is hosted. More importantly, the environmental and human impact when things go wrong, will become an increasingly important consideration for data centre owners and managers who will be focussed on investing in the best ways to mitigate that risk.
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www.tomorrowsfm.com TOMORROW’S FM | 31
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