Leeds firms collaborate on major data centre works

Two Leeds firms have collaborated on a project to bring energy efficient IT cooling system to a major data centre in North Tyneside.

Airedale International and nationwide building services contractor T Clarke were selected to supply and integrate the IT cooling system for the first phase data centre.

Airedale’s Chilled Water Precision Air Conditioning (PAC) systems are expected to yield energy savings in excess of £322k.

Data centres are estimated to account for 1.5% of global energy consumption so cooling experts like Airedale International invest significant time and resource in the development and testing of systems which minimise power usage and reduce energy costs for their owners.

Airedale pioneered the concept of ‘concurrent’ free cooling in data centres over 15 years ago, a design technique that maximises energy savings by reducing the need for mechanical cooling. In more northerly locations like Newcastle-upon-Tyne with low average ambient temperatures, as much as 97% of the year can be spent in energy-saving pure or partial free cooling.

The Newcastle data centre is also designed for minimum ‘Tier 3’ resilience. This ensures that planned maintenance activities can take place without disrupting the operation of computer hardware located in the data centre, with added resilience built into the PAC systems cooling the most critical computing components.

The system was designed, manufactured, factory tested and delivered to site in under ten weeks.

Otto Seeger, director of T Clarke Leeds Ltd, Mission Critical Division, said: “Close collaboration on factory testing and delivery, enhancements such as sequencer controls to chillers and a commitment to achieving optimum system performance played an important role in saving energy and, ultimately, money for the end user over the life of the system.”

UK sales director for Airedale, Paul Oliver, added: “We’ve been a major force in the cooling industry now for forty years and are highly respected around the world for our expertise.

“This, in combination with long-standing partnerships with contractors and facilities management specialists like T Clarke, ensures we are trusted by some of the UK’s largest data centre operators.

“The Cobalt installation is another in a long stream of successful data centre projects for clients ranging from the University of Leeds High Performance Computing facility to the Victoria & Albert Museum.”