Case Study Excerpts: Technology
HED: MISSION CRITICAL: Online All the Time
DEK: MTU Onsite Energy powers the Internet Economy
With 100,000+ square feet under roof, a modern data center is a technological irony, a bricks and mortar behemoth spawned by the very Internet Age that has in many industries rendered bricks and mortar obsolete. And unless you’re an employee or a certified V.I.P., you’ll probably never actually see the inside of one for the very same security reasons Diesel Today can’t reveal the identity of the customers featured in this story. What we can reveal, however, is that so far, six of the online economy’s ten largest companies have chosen MTU Onsite Energy gensets to keep the power flowing to these mission-critical facilities.
Power Flow=Information Flow
Their identities may need to remain something of a mystery, but data centers’ crucial place in the Internet economy is not. They house the computer systems, telecommunications gear and miles of cable assuring the flow of the digitized information that is the lifeblood of any modern organization. That means the primary goal of the data center and its redundant, fail-safe engineering is nothing less than the absolute assurance of business continuity.
In addition to computer and telecommunications hardware that require 24/7/365 uptime, data centers house thousands of square feet of elevated server racks and water-chilling systems to keep them cool. A complete loss of electrical power, irregularities in the voltage being delivered (“transients”) and brief power outages originating at the local electrical utility are serious threats to the stability and integrity of this equipment…
Customer 1: Internet Services Company
Standby Power System Objectives: Simplicity and reliability.
Well-known for its leading search engine, Web portal and email service, this company has online offerings available in dozens of languages attracting hundreds of millions of users each month. The company installed 21 MTU generator sets that form the core of its backup power system at several data centers, with each genset providing 2,000–2,250 kW of emergency backup power for a total of approximately 44 megawatts in redundant layers. Multiple utility feeds provide the first line of defense and if an outage occurs at one substation feed, a second feed automatically takes over. Uninterruptable power supply (UPS) systems launch instantly if the utility feeds fail completely, providing power until the MTU standby gensets start.
Rather than running in parallel, this customer opted to use individual generator sets to back up different segments of the data center load. In this unique installation designed by MTU Onsite Energy, every genset in the system is kept in synchronization with a “reference source”-- either another generator set or another utility feed. With every genset in sync with a common source, power transfers are instantaneous and produce no disruptive transients…