Airedale works with data centre to reduce PUE
Airedale is working with UK Grid to reduce the PUE (power usage effectiveness) of its Synergy House data centre in Manchester. Rob Garbutt, managing director of UK Grid, explains that initially the data centre had cooling units with fixed-air-volume fans giving a PUE* of 1.7. The first stage of reducing the PUE was the introduction of cold aisles and fan inverter drives to achieve 1.4. The next stage is to introduce Airedale free-cooling equipment to reduce the PUE to 1.2.
Synergy House offers two floors of Tier II data-centre space with fully redundant power, cooling and connectivity. Airedale has worked closely with UK Grid to develop a split-system precision air-conditioning solution tailored to UK Grid’s requirements and with specially designed control to significantly reduce energy use.
Eight EasiCool 45 kW DX downflow units provide redundant underfloor cooling at constant cold-aisle conditions of 22°C and 50% RH.
Inverters on the evaporator fans of the EasiCool units enable fan speed to be controlled in response to changes in temperature. An electronic expansion valve fitted to the EasiCool units typically increases the EER by up to 30%.
*PUE is total power entering a data centre divided by the power used by its IT equipment.
