EUROPE every data centre provider must face when building a facility .
“ Power and efficiency , heating and cooling ,” he says . “ There ’ s also security and agility . These really are the key issues and headaches for companies and operators of data centres .”
It was this understanding that brought SAK and Baumgärtner together as he could , at the very first step of designing a data centre , look at what would make an efficient and effective data centre .
“ If you build a very efficient data centre , automatically you use less power and that helps the cooling problem . From the very start the goal was to build an efficient data centre , one that stands on the edge of the possibility for colocation data centres ,” he says .
SAK is building a data centre with the aim of having a power usage effectiveness ( PUE ) below 1.2 and this meant that the company could achieve this through a free cooling concept , using low external air temperatures to assist in the cooling of water .
SAK partnered with a company called Hoval and designed eight cooling machines to be used as part of the data centre .
“ They are really huge – we designed our buildings around these cooling machines . Around a quarter of the building is used just for cooling ,” says Baumgärtner .
The design of the build , centred around this cooling mechanism , significantly altered the design and build process .
“ It made it more expensive in places , more difficult ,” he says . “ But it also took away some of the complexity in cooling , such as water pipes that we no longer need . Quite literally , you are never going to run out of air for the cooling .”
The culmination of these cooling elements provided SAK with freedom as the company had ultimately found a solution to one of the major problems right from the start . Looking at the energy usage perspective , SAK uses a fly wheel concept from Caterpillar , together with the company ’ s diesel engines . Flywheel energy storage uses a rotational system , which lowers in speed as energy
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