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Currently the U.S. data center market is in the midst of unprecedented growth despite the slow economic downturn, which means electrical contractors are being provided with a larger slice of the pie as opportunities arise for them to offer greater input when partnering up with facility operators during the design/build process.
These close working relationships are a result of the greater-than-normal role of electricity in data centers, with electrical equipment comprising 30 to 50 percent of a typical data center's construction costs.
And although today's data centers are far more efficient than previous machines, the influx in growth has driven the demand in electricity consumption to new levels. With that said, energy efficiency is at the core of data center design and construction.
EDSA Micro Corp., a leading innovator in electrical distribution systems design and simulation solutions, has developed a complete platform of power analytics software products that meet today's unique demands by accurately predicting when and where electrical power outages are going to occur while there is still time to prevent them, and also providing solutions for the complete life cycle of the power system.
This helps resolve a problem that drains more than $150 billion annually from the U.S. economy, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Because 80 percent of downtime is caused by electrical power problems within the facility itself, EDSA's software applications helps organizations save billions of dollars in losses and provide failsafe services for their customers despite operational problems.
These software platforms also ensure optimum up-time and help facilities perfect their system management, maintenance and emergency procedures since human error is the leading cause of downtime.
"Most operators of data centers who are tasked with saving energy or using energy more productively don't have the baseline data to know where they are and to know whether or not if they do something different they impact or produce a change in the use of energy," says Mark Ascolese, chairman and chief executive officer, EDSA.
Ascolese notes that their software at it's most fundamental level provides the raw operating data that allows the data center operator to know first of all where they are in terms of energy use, and second of all to determine if they do something, whether that something will improve or degrade their use of energy.
"And then, of course, the third step is once they found out that they do something it'll change what the energy result is, they will then be able to measure whether or not they actually achieved that result," adds Ascolese.
EDSA is unique in that they can provide facility operators those three data points in real-time for their particular configuration and data center. So, the software tells them where they are, allows them to simulate a change to determine what affect that change will have on their operation, and then thirdly allows them to measure once they made the change whether they are getting the expected results or not.
Although the facility operator is by and large using the software, most operators have a very close working relationship with the electrical contractor — one that probably helped them install the equipment in their data center or have called upon to have something fixed.
"In my experience, it's a very close partnership between data center operator and electrical contractor. I would expect that the electrical contractor and operator would be looking at the information provided by the power analytic software and probably making decisions together about what changes they can possibly make relative to their electrical infrastructure that would have a positive effect on energy efficiency," said Ascolese.
By and large, what it boils down to at the end of the day is that you're working on electrical infrastructure — breakers, switch gears, wires, busbars, etc. — and this is familiar territory that the electrical contractor has a lot of knowledge about and expertise in.
