Fire safety scrutiny in the data centre intensifies
Written by Nicole Cappella Thu 24 Oct 2024
Fire safety is a growing concern across the data centre industry, after several recent fires have disrupted operations and in some cases, caused injury to employees at the facilities.
In September, a fire at a Digital Realty data centre in Singapore lasted for two days. After an investigation, the cause of the fire is believed to be a lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery malfunction. The fire caused property damage at the data centre and disrupted operations for customers of the colocation site, particularly Alibaba, inc.
The same month, India’s largest telecom carrier, Reliance Jio, experienced a data centre fire that caused a nationwide network outage. This highlighted the potential danger of data centre fires disrupting critical services.
Luckily, no injuries were reported at either of these fires. Even the property damage and business disruption appeared to be relatively controlled.
But data centre owners/operators have not always been so lucky. For example, the OVH Cloud data centre in Strausborg sustained the most property damage of any fire to date, burning down completely in March of 2021.
The common thread across many of these incidents is the presence of lithium-ion batteries. While the batteries provide backup power for critical infrastructure during power outages, they can be unstable when exposed to oxygen.
“Li-ion batteries, while highly efficient for energy storage, pose a fire risk when the lithium gas is exposed to oxygen … The larger the data centre, the more Li-ion batteries there will be,” said Andrew Green, Regional Data Centre Practice Lead, Asia Pacific, at JLL.
Typically, data centres place these batteries in specialised storage areas outfitted with cutting-edge fire suppression systems. Most commonly, these systems extinguish fires by rapidly reducing oxygen levels in the area when a fire is detected, keeping the fire from spreading to other parts of the facility.
While there are no globally accepted standards for data centre fire prevention, owners and operators of these facilities are focusing on fire safety, especially now, with several high-profile incidents occurring in a relatively short time period.
Battery monitoring systems, which continuously assess battery health and performance, have become a standard feature in modern data centres. However, data centre operators must also ensure that maintenance and monitoring are sufficient to support fire safety technology.
Written by Nicole Cappella Thu 24 Oct 2024