Projects / Notting Hill, Victoria
Notting Hill colocation cooling retrofit
Building owner, direct engagement
- Contract value
- $1,860,000
- Duration
- 10 months
- Sector
- Data centre
- Systems
- Mechanical, Controls, Maintenance
- Completed
- 2022
Brief
Replacement of end of life direct expansion room units with chilled water cooling in a live 1.1MW colocation facility carrying customer service level agreements.
Systems installed
- 10 × 180kW chilled water room units replacing DX units on a one for one swap
- 2 × 650kW air cooled chillers with free cooling coils, economiser active below 14°C ambient
- Cold aisle containment to eight rows, 96 cabinets, with blanking of 340 open floor penetrations
- Overhead chilled water reticulation, 410m of roll grooved DN150 and DN100 on new supports
- Under floor and pipework leak detection tape alarmed to the BMS and the operations centre
Constraints
No customer outage was available at any point, so each unit was swapped hot inside a single nine hour night window with temporary spot cooling and a rack level temperature watch running against agreed abort criteria. The floor void was 450mm and already carrying power and data, so the chilled water could not go under the floor and was run overhead through an occupied hall, which meant every support penetration into the slab soffit had to be scanned and approved above live cabinets.
Outcome
Ten units replaced over 32 night shifts between March and November 2022 with no customer affecting incident recorded. Facility PUE metered at 1.42 across the following twelve months against 1.71 for the twelve months before the works. Rolled onto a scheduled maintenance contract in December 2022.