EUROPE’S GREENEST DATA CENTRE GETS GREEN LIGHT

Up to 40% saving in energy use predicted through the use of absorption cooling

Lasercharm has won planning consent to build what it believes will be Europe’s greenest data centre location at Sutton, Cambridgeshire, which will use 40% less energy through absorption cooling.

At the Data Centre Europe conference earlier this year, Lasercharm representative, Alex Arthur, unveiled his ambition for the 65,000m² development, to be built on the former Mepal airfield site at Sutton, 12 miles north of Cambridge.

The philosophy of the Elean Data Campus is to provide world-class data centre facilities in a discrete rural setting, using energy-efficient techniques to deliver low running costs, supported by a 400-home Eco Village which would be heated by the waste energy from the Campus. Plans for the Eco Village are currently being discussed with East Cambridge District Council.

The six data centre buildings will be powered from multiple redundant sources, principally from the adjacent 38MW straw-burning combined heat and power plant, delivering demonstrable energy conservation. The plant will only use 100% carbon-neutral waste as a power source, reducing its environmental impact and further establishing its sustainability credentials.

The waste heat from the plant will be available as an energy source for the Eco Village to heat the homes and also to cool the data centres through absorption cooling.

The absorption chillers operate through a simple heat exchange process using super-heated lithium bromide, which would be energised using the off-take heat from the power station, which consumes almost no new energy.

Studies have not yet been completed, however at this stage it appears that the data centre’s power demand, a theoretical maximum 72MW, could be very significantly reduced through the absorption cooling process. Preliminary estimates suggest that the cooling load may fall by 30MW, a saving of approximately 40%.

The entire site benefits from being very close to a data hub, offering multiple carriers access to dark fibre.

Lasercharm representative, Alex Arthur, said:

“The reduction in the energy burden will translate directly to reduced operational costs for the data centre occupiers, in addition to reducing the impact on the environment by the data centre campus. The combination of the biomass plant, the Eco Village and the absorption cooling will probably establish Elean Data Campus as the most environmentally-friendly and cost-efficient data centre location in Europe.”

Click here for further details of the Elean Data Campus or, for further information about the data centre, contact GVA Grimley Director, Chris Jones, on 020 7911 2525 or click here to email him.

The architects for the Data Campus are Arcadiam, and the planners are DP9.

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Friday 13 June 2008

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