Colt data centre

Background

Colt is the leading “information delivery platform” in Europe for sharing and storage essential company information.

Purposes

The purpose of the project was the replacement of the three existing 1200 kW chillers based on screw compressors. Although the system comprised three chillers, only two of them were running, with significant disadvantages concerning management costs. In addition to that the entire system was considered inefficient and very expensive.
The new system was required to provide low maintenance operations, resulting in low costs, lower energy consumption, high efficiency and great reliability. Moreover, it was necessary to ensure the cooling process within the data centre during the replacement phases.

Project

The project concerned the replacement of existing chillers with six 550 kW Turbomiser air cooled units, with Turbocor compressors, that have considerably improved robustness and flexibility of the plant. All chillers operate together and have inverter integrated compressors in order to obtain the maximum efficiency and optimise the action of the heat exchangers. As a result of the oil-free design and limited number of moving parts, the system requires no oil changes and much reduced servicing, resulting in a sensible reduction in maintenance costs.

Results

Thanks to the new Turbomiser units, it has been possible to obtain an energy saving of 54% and a reduction of £ 230,000 in annual costs.
During the “Datacentre Dynamics Award” in December 2012, the project won the “Innovation in the Medium Data Centre” award.