Contingency planning for power failure
- The challenge
Being prepared for plant failure in a data centre
- The solution
Robust contingency plan to ensure business as usual
- The impact
Ready-to-go plan saves the day when needed
Client:Data centre facilities management company
Location:Surrey, UK
Sectors:Data centers
The Challenge
Being prepared for power plant failure in a data centre
Data centres need constant power and cooling to function. Any type of power plant or cooling failure can cause untold problems for the facilities management companies that run them. So when a leading FM company came to us for a way to mitigate the risk, we knew just what they needed - a robust contingency plan for power failure and cooling that could be implemented quickly and with minimal fuss.
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The Solution
A reliable power failure contingency plan to ensure business as usual
Our engineers first carried out a detailed site survey of the FM's data centres to understand the power and temperature requirements of each site. They then designed bespoke plans so that every site knew what to do in the event of an emergency and had reliable data centre backup power and cooling when they needed it. Each plan for power plant failure included:
- Which type of rental equipment was needed
- Where it would be located - with installation and connection points
- How it would be transported
- Methods of operation and roles and responsibilities.
- Important information around risk assessments
So, when a period of particularly hot weather the following summer started to strain the chiller plant at one of the data centres, its contingency plan was quickly put into action. Following a call one Friday evening we delivered, installed and commissioned three 200 kW chillers, a 1 MW heat exchanger ;and two 500 kVA generators - plus all relevant hoses, cables and fuel tanks. We then plugged it all into the site's chiller plant to support it with supplementary cooling to meet the requirements until the seasonal spike in temperature subsided.