All data centre operators understand the importance of emergency power – no site can operate without it or achieve the efficiency ratings required to attract profitable business. However, with the upcoming Triad season just around the corner, the critical nature of backup power needs to be emphasised. Ian Wilcoxson, investor diesel sales manager – Data Centre Power Solutions for Finning Power Systems, discusses this consideration in more detail, ensuring data centres select the best solution to suit their needs
As we move into winter, we enter the ‘Triad season’: a four-month period between November and February, during which the National Grid identifies three half-hour periods when electricity demand in the UK is at its highest. It is important to note that Triads must be at least ten days apart, to avoid all three instances falling in consecutive hours on the same day, which could otherwise occur during a particularly cold period of weather.
Once identified, the National Grid looks at the amount of energy used by each local electricity network operator and calculates each operator’s average peak demand for that winter. This data then informs a ‘capacity charge’ levied against the network operator, which covers National Grid’s costs in ensuring the availability of this peak amount of electricity to the operator. These will, in turn, impose a capacity charge on each electricity supplier they provide to, who will then try and recover these costs by increasing prices for customers.
The Triad charging system is a tool that has been in place since the early 1990s, specifically targeted at large industrial and commercial users of electricity. While there is no way of predicting when a Triad will occur, history has taught us that they often take place on a Monday to Thursday, during periods of particularly cold weather, between 5-7pm, when industrial demand and the domestic teatime period coincide.
Delta’s data centre nightmare
As the season approaches, it is important to ask, ‘How confident am I in my backup power?’ What are the likely repercussions if a standby generator failed to activate correctly?
To illustrate this point and to reiterate why a reliable backup power system is so critical, especially when companies are already confident in their electricity infrastructure, it’s worth examining a recent example of system failure.
In August this year there was a stark example of why backup power and regular system checks can save even the biggest customers headaches, when what started as a minor problem at a data centre grounded one of the world’s biggest commercial airline fleets.
On Monday 8 August 2016 an uninterrupted power source switch at Delta Airlines’ main data centre suffered a small electrical fire. This caused knock-on problems that cut power to the entire facility.
The company says it managed to stabilise the power quickly, but several critical systems didn’t switch over to the backups. In the wake of the incident Delta also found that around 300 of its 7,000 servers were not actually configured to run on backup power.
Engineers eventually managed to get the data centre running again, but while it was down every single Delta plane across the world was grounded. Hundreds of flights were cancelled or massively delayed. Between compensation, lost revenue and the damage to its reputation, the incident will likely cost Delta tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
Of course, it’s easy to point fingers in the wake of an incident like this and say what should have been done, but backup power is something that is easy for companies – especially those operating their data infrastructure internally like Delta – to put off.
This requirement is exacerbated further still during the winter months, when the Triad season is underway, meaning that for mission critical applications, it’s a timely reminder to consider all the options available to ensure data resilience.
The threat of brownouts and blackouts
The increased demand for electricity during the Triad season can mean that brownouts – a drop in voltage in an electrical power system – or blackouts are a very real possibility. While other commercial sites might be able to cope with an unexpected brownout, data centres cannot afford to be without power for even a moment because so many people depend on their services, whatever the time of day.
Indeed, some commercial sites may choose during the Triad season to even take their systems offline during these ‘peak’ times when energy demand is likely to be at its greatest. This, however, is not an option for data centres.
The threat of a blackout, taking a data centre’s systems offline for an unknown length of time, would be a worst-case scenario for any business. As a result, the importance of having a trusted, reliable and proven backup power system in place cannot be overlooked.
The measure of uptime
The Uptime Institute has, for many years recommended that standby gensets should be rated for continuous operation in order to ensure power availability and data centre resilience in the event of a mains outage, stating that: ‘Engine generators for Tier III and IV sites shall not have a limitation on consecutive hours of operation when loaded to ‘N’ demand.’ With the Triad season approaching, this issue becomes even more pressing.
However, while this provides the necessary assurances of power continuity, it can also be a costly approach. Not only is equipment specified with a higher rating than necessary under normal operating conditions, it can result in the installation of larger units that take up more valuable data space and may require more frequent servicing and maintenance. At the same time, operators will want to ensure that they comply with the Uptime Institute’s recommendations and the ISO 8528-1 standard in order to achieve the required Tier rating; so deliberate oversizing of gensets has been a routine approach.
Thanks to some work that Caterpillar has undertaken with the Uptime Institute, Finning can now advise that the standard Cat standby and mission critical ratings exceed the parameters referenced in the ISO 8528-1 standard. ISO 8528-1 imposes a runtime limit of 200 hours a year on emergency standby ratings. Cat ratings have a maximum expected usage of 500 hours per year, plus ensuring output is available for the duration of the outage.
This means that a Cat standby or mission critical generator set will provide uninterrupted power for the duration of an outage related to failure of the local utility source – meaning that customers can specify a smaller, more compact genset that is sized closer to the load and still retain the same power resilience that they would get from a larger unit rated for continuous operation.
Finning has established itself a strong reputation for supply reliable, highly efficient and proven mission critical power solutions for the data centre market. As the sole Cat dealer in the UK and Ireland, the company offers an extensive range of diesel and gas-powered generator sets, supported by industry-leading knowledge, expertise and service support.
The advance of BIM
An exciting development in the data centre space over the past few years has been the growth of Building Information Modelling (BIM). The process is becoming increasingly important in all aspects of a building’s design and operation and Finning is now making BIM objects available for a growing number of its Cat generators, especially those specified for standby power for data centres.
There are many definitions of BIM but, in essence, it is the means by which everyone can understand a building through the use of a digital model. Modelling an asset in digital form enables those who interact with the building, from initial design, through construction to operation and maintenance, to optimise their actions, resulting in a greater ‘whole life’ value for the asset.
Through BIM, the UK construction industry is undergoing a digital revolution, with the goal that all team members work with the same, most up to date, information.
The key objective is to reduce the capital costs and the carbon burden from the construction and operation of the built environment by 20%.
This requires product manufacturers to create BIM ‘objects’ and to make them readily available to anyone involved in the building and maintenance supply chain.
A BIM object is a combination of many things, covering: information content that defines a product; product properties, such as thermal performance; geometry representing the product’s physical characteristics; visualisation data giving the object a recognisable appearance and functional data, that enables the object to be positioned and then behave in the same manner as the product itself.
For example, by using the BIM object for a generator set, an architect can virtually place the product in the building, check clearances and tolerances for doors, ducting, cabling and other services at the design stage and be confident it can then be installed as planned.
The same model can then be used in the construction phase, so the installation takes place more efficiently, saving time and avoiding remedial work.
Finally, the same model can be used by the building services and maintenance teams to plan predictive and reactive maintenance work. The investment in creating BIM objects by Caterpillar across its standard standby power range, ensuring Finning can provide rich data about its content to help ensure the construction and maintenance of data centres is as cost effective and streamlined as possible.