SUDLOWS
INNOVATIVE DESIGN
Both the UAE and India ( not to mention the SEA markets where Sudlows Consulting is headed next ) present some interesting design challenges , especially when working on huge projects for hypersustainable , hyper-efficient hyperscalers . “ Climate was one of the big challenges coming from the UK where you can do free cooling pretty much all year round . In Dubai - and also now in India - the ambient temperatures can sit for prolonged periods of time in the high thirties , and even up to the fifties as well ,” Rippingale explains . “ The heat is something you just can ' t avoid . To make things efficient in your external environment , you need to make them as efficient as possible inside the data centre . On the power side , we make sure to closecouple everything from the UPS to the IT load to prevent losses . On the cooling side , if you ' re trying to run a data hall under 20 degrees , it doesn ' t matter what country you ' re in , it ' s not going to be efficient . Here in the Middle East and India , we ' re really trying to push our internal temperatures as high as we can without getting into areas that would be unsafe for human beings . We ' re usually running our whitespace at about 27 degrees , which does give us the opportunity to do some free cooling during the winter and reduce our PUE .”
The other area to which Rippingale has clearly given a lot of careful thought is water . “ One thing we ' re very mindful of in the UAE and India is that one ' s a desert and one has water scarcity where people don ' t have secure access to clean drinking water . So , we don ’ t use water to cool our sites ; it wouldn ' t be ethical or responsible ,” he says emphatically . “ When there ' s water scarcity , and more than 884 million people don ' t have access to safe water to drink , we shouldn ' t be using millions of gallons of it per day to slightly benefit our PUE ; there are other ways .”
104 December 2021