Colt’s Data Center – London

Background

Colt DCS has more than 20 years’ experience in delivering best-in-class data centres. They are a pioneer of modular, flexible design and operation of highly resilient and efficient data centres worldwide.

Together with Cooltherm we worked to the replacement of the cooling system. The data centre being served by the chillers is a cutting-edge tier four data centre, Colt have uncompromising requirements for quality, reliability and efficiency for all equipment present on their sites.

Purposes

The purpose of the project is the replacement of four inefficient and unreliable chillers which were providing high operational and maintenance costs.

The project requires 5 MW of total cooling capacity, maximum efficiency and reliability. Data centres of this scale have a massive hunger for cooling therefore controlling their energy consumption is paramount to lead to substantial energy savings.

Project

The project involves the design, manufacture and installation of 4 air cooled Turbomiser chillers, with centrifugal compressors, providing 1250 kW of cooling capacity each.

Air cooled heat rejection plant on this scale produces a lot of warm air, and even with the best possible plant layout air recirculation can be a real problem and effect performance massively across the year. To avoid this, we worked with Cooltherm to design a special “Cold-Isle” containment solution: this design is made of horizontal panels that avoid air recirculation and ensure the chillers only “breath” air at ambient temperature.

In addition specific requirements in terms of design, the project requires also particular attention from the installation point of view. Indeed, working on a data centre no downtime are possible. Therefore, to ensure always full operation of the plant, the chillers are replaced over four carefully planned phases of work.

Results

This is not the first installation of Turbomiser units at Colt’s data centres: they have already witnessed the benefits of Turbomiser technology and chose to rely again on the highest efficiency and reliability Turbomiser ensures.

The new installation is expected to reach an overall COP of 5.1 (W/W)*.

*Cooling kW/RT = 0.69 – Cooling EER BTU/Wh = 17.40