Greening Data Centres - Polaris

Categories: Sustainable Commercial Buildings, Case Studies     Sectors: Owners, Builders, Designers

Location: Sinnathamby BVD, Springfield, Ipswich (26km SW of Brisbane)
Client: Joint Venture Springfield Land Corporation & Suncorp
Design Manager & Principal Contractor: Thiess
Scope: Shell & Core
Start Date: June 2007
Practical Completion: January 2009
Contract Value: $121m
NLA: 6900 m2
Building Footprint: ~3200 m2 

Summary

The 5-storey Polaris Data Centre is a Tier 3+ IT storage facility in the heart of Springfield providing a climate controlled and secure environment for mission critical stored information for hospitals, government departments, utilities, banks and other organisations. Tier 3+ facilities are typically used to provide the highest level of support to blue-chip organisations.

The data centre has been designed to enable heavy equipment (generators, air conditioning chillers and electrical equipment to be lifted into the centre by crane, thereby preventing equipment to be broken into smaller components and reassembled inside the building.

 

A data centre is a facility used to house computer systems, ICT infrastructure and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage equipment. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communi-cations connections, environmental controls (eg air conditioning, fire suppression) and special security devices. Such facilities require only a handful of operational staff. 

 

Promoting energy efficiency

With data centres being up to 40 times more energy intensive than conventional office buildings1, and noting that the building's fit-out is outside the scope of the designers, over 5,000 electrical sub-meters are being installed to assist tenants and operators measure and monitor power usage for each zone and key functions.

Controlling humidity and temperature inside the data centre is a critical design consideration. Unlike normal commercial buildings, which can utilise some natural ventilation techniques in addition to standard heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, virtually no insulation is used.

This helps minimise energy consumption while reducing the requirement on HVAC systems (and thus save electricity), and matches local climate conditions. A painted membrane has also been installed to help control the transmission of moisture between the data floors and the outside world.  

 

Secure power supplies

Many uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) rely on backup generators and banks of batteries to provide a secure supply for core systems should the main supply fail. Polaris Data Centre has utilised an inertial rotary storage system, provided by Piller Power Systems, where a large rotating flywheel stores energy and then releases it when required. The advantages of this UPS system include:

• Reliable continuity of power during a failure (no gap before UPS kicks in)
• Rotary systems are generally more efficient than static systems due the double conversion of incoming power into usable energy for large loads;
• completely removes the need for battery banks, potentially increasing the Net Lettable Area (NLA);
• near unity 0.99 power factor (efficient delivery of electricity being converted to meet supply) during normal mains supply, thus reducing electricity bills.

When fully fitted out and operating at design capacity, ten back-up 2530kVA Diesel-UPS will supply power to core systems and air conditioning systems for up to 48 hours after a mains outage. These generators, made in Germany, are capable of running on a 5% biodiesel fuel mix, enabling operators the option of reducing the amount of petroleum based diesel consumed.

Alternatively powered generators using compressed natural gas, liquid petroleum gas or solar power were investigated though none were found to be able to supply the large step loads needed. The maturity of the supply and servicing of CNG/diesel hybrid generators is rapidly changing and hope to be viable for data centre applications in the near future.  

 

Recycled water

Maintaining a controlled thermal environment is vital inside a data centre such that natural ventilation features have to be backed up with mechanical air filters, heating and ventilation systems. Cooling towers utilise large amounts of water (Polaris Data Centre is expected to use 7.5 litres/second, equivalent to the water in a standardOlympic sized swimming pool being used in 3.85 days), and to help reduce the amount of potable mains water needed, the centre has been designed to use recycled water when available and distributed within the Springfield CBD. 

To provide a secure source of recycled water, custom made steel and concrete water tanks able to hold 1,500,000 litres have been installed.  

 

Rainwater harvesting

In addition to the recycled water tanks, an additional 22,500 litres of water can be harvested from the roof and stored during periods of rainfall. This water will be used for garden irrigation and cleaning of the building facade. 

 

Low VOC paints and adhesives

During the design phase, low volatile organic compound (VOC) paints and adhesives were specified to improve indoor air quality.

 

Future sustainability opportunities

Areas of improvement in the design of future data centres includes greater provision of natural daylight, recycled or reused building materials (eg steel, timber), alternatively fuelled generators, and provision of smaller sized car parking spaces.

For more information: Thiess (07) 3121 9000 http://www.thiess.com.au