Through a strategic relationship with Hewlett Packard Critical Facilities Services we are providing the architectural services for the development of mega data centres for Sberbank in Moscow. Our involvement includes site assessment, feasibility studies, and development of prototype models, detailed designs and continuing consultancy support.

The selected existing concrete frame building was to be transformed into 5000 sqm of IT space and become the largest Sberbank Data Centre. Careful planning was necessary to accommodate power supplies with appropriate levels of redundancy and to achieve the client’s energy efficiency requirement for an annual PUE under 1.6.

The basic principle of the proposed indirect free cooling concept is that the internal data hall air (primary) is passed through one side of a large heat recovery device and rejects its heat to the external air (secondary) side, through which outside air is passed. At all times, the two air streams are separated by the plates within the heat exchanger.

With the internal temperatures elevated to 24°C db supply it is possible then to utilise the low external ambient dry bulb temperatures to cool the data hall via the plate heat exchanger. This can be achieved for a large percentage of the year and required no mechanical refrigeration process. In addition to this, the evaporative (or adiabatic) cooling principle (subject to availability of town’s water estimated at 19m3/h) is used when ambient dry bulb conditions are too high to bring the percentage of the year when no mechanical refrigeration is required to almost 100%. During extreme external ambient conditions neither the free cooling nor evaporative cooling (alone or combined) are able to meet the primary air supply conditions. Therefore, supplementary cooling is required from the incorporation of chilled water or DX cooling coils.

Using the above cooling approach the most significant contribution to overall energy use becomes the circulation fans. To enable further energy savings, the primary air (data centre side) fans can be made variable speed to allow for efficient operation during partial load scenarios. The secondary (external air) fans can also be made variable speed, which allows for reduced volume during lower external dry bulb air temperatures. To enable additional resilience of operation, the fans in each of the units are installed on an N+1 basis. This can produce a mechanical PUE of under 0.10.