Analysis Identifies Key Improvements to Meet ASHRAE Standards

One of Enabled Energy’s clients recently provisioned space and power for a new customer in its Louisville, KY data center. Initial customer equipment turnup resulted in temperature escalations raising SLA concerns for the customer and the client’s operations team as to the available cooling capacity to service the contracted load.

Enabled Energy (EE) was engaged to review three different loading profiles and to provide recommendations for improvements given any environment restrictions.

Enabled Energy performed a thorough capacity and load analysis at the site for the three different load scenarios.

IT load was recorded as 148.5 kW, distributed across 20 cabinets. With the internal cabinet containment and higher flow tiles installed, the aisles were adequately cooled and stable with isolated exceptions (i.e. inlet temperatures of 81°F to 83°F were noted at locations where equipment was recessed toward the middle or back of the cabinets).

Maximum load was anticipated to be 200 kW, distributed across 28 total cabinets. No issue was expected with additional suite loading if the client were to maintain the same level of internal cabinet blanking and containment, continue to adjust perforated tile type to align with cabinet density, and migrate to a SAT control schema.

This scenario evaluated distributing the anticipated 200kW load more evenly across a higher quantity of cabinets, 36 in total per the proposed layout provided by the client. Spreading out the IT load demand across a larger footprint would correspond to a larger hot aisle area. This would reduce hot aisle congestion and recirculation to the cold aisles would be less likely, thus limiting the effect for supplemental containment.

Enabled Energy’s evaluation identified concerns and necessary improvements to achieve environmental operation within ASHRAE recommended standards for each of the loading profiles. Based on these findings, EE provided a detailed list of recommendations and additional considerations for the client moving forward as well as a follow-up Q&A session to clarify the results for their end-user.

Enabled Energy completed this work in early 2023.