| Datacentre power
and agreement on client requirements, a pre-contract service agreement (PCSA) will be signed. The core statutory processes will be researched and agreed, covering planning, building regulations, health and safety and licence requirements. The outcome from these initial meetings will be a comprehensive project brief for client approval, covering project and sustainability outcomes, quality aspirations and spatial requirements. These will form the basis of design (BoD) on which feasibility studies and a detailed project execution plan can be developed and agreed.
● Engineering expertise: Prime power is not a plug and play component, and cannot be treated like a conventional standby system. There are a lot of moving parts and safety and regulatory challenges. Many of these challenges may be new to datacentre operators, but they are everyday considerations for our team. AVK has been dealing with prime power generation for many years, for major civil engineering and industrial projects as well as for data centres.
In addition to bid and concept managers, an AVK prime power team will generally be led by an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, a power systems engineer and a gas safety specialist with dozens of years of hands-on experience, and the resources and the knowledge base to understand the varying requirements of these systems. Our long-term relationships with specialist suppliers for everything from grid-scale turbines to battery storage and energy management systems also enables us to integrate components that are a good match and use the latest emissions mitigation technology.
● The full design process, from BoD to BIM: When the basis of design has been agreed, full concept design and spatial co- ordination (RIBA Work Plan Stages 2 and 3) can take place, and a planning application can be submitted. Once approved, full technical design (Stage 4) can begin, culminating in a building regulations application and a full construction plan. Two critical roles in this phase are the appointment of a full-time SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) integrator and BIM (building information modelling) co-ordinator. A collaborative, 3D BIM allows for ongoing design optimisation, better energy efficiency and management of construction and operation of the project through its complete lifecycle.
Prime examples
Datacentre microgrids are still few and far between, but AVK has a number of projects in the UK, Ireland and Europe which are either up and running, fully designed, or undergoing commissioning. We can reference these projects when designing
AVK team at a datacentre facility that combines flexible generation and battery storage to support power supply resilience. Image: AVK
new systems and pass on knowledge from one project to the next, as well as internally through the AVK Academy.
One of our most successful projects is a 110 MW primary power scheme in Dublin, one of the best fully-operational off-grid data centre projects in Europe. It uses a battery energy storage system (BESS) and hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) for backup, and self- generates power using natural gas with onsite dual-fuelled generators. It’s an early-phase on- site power solution that supports the datacentre campus while grid capacity is secured. The campus is growing fast, supported by a 200 MW gas connection to support phase 2. In a recent interview with AVK project director, Jason Harrison (https://www.avk-seg. com/post/microgrids-power-dcs-of-tomorrow), he discusses the design challenges we tackled on the Dublin site, in particular the integration of battery energy storage and biofuels.
Another of our current projects includes an on-site 100 MVA multi-fuel power generation plant capable of running on a combination of fuels (primarily HVO) and gas.
A new paradigm: data centres as energy centres
The move behind-the-meter puts power front and centre.
If managed correctly, this will drive a rethink of the datacentre’s function and value to society. Flexible, efficient and sustainable power system design will be the key to this transformation, meeting the needs of accelerated computing and supporting the grid in the process. The critical role of microgrids in providing balancing power to accelerate renewables targets is described in our joint report with Wärtsilä (
https://www.avk-seg.com/data- centre-dispatchable-capacity), which provides great further reading.
Rendering of AVK/Pure Data Centres Group facility, Dublin, Ireland. Image: AVK
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