Schneider helps to create ‘greenest’ data centre in the world
Thu 16 Oct 2014
Schneider Electric has announced its involvement in building the Green Mountain data centre in Rennesøy, ‘the world’s greenest data centre,’ based in a former NATO bunker among the Norwegian fjords.
The facility uses 100 per cent renewable energy sources, and its servers are cooled using the surrounding seawater which results in a PUE level of less than 1.2. According to Green Mountain these sustainability efforts make the Rennesøy site one of the ‘greenest’ data centres in the world.
Schneider has provided the complete IT infrastructure framework for the centre, including all of the power and cooling systems.
“The combination of our flexible, scalable and reliable solutions and the data centre’s unique location will provide an extremely stable power supply security to Green Mountain’s customers. For Schneider Electric, this is an important contract and we look forward to being a part of the development of the future data centres in Norway,” said Arild Bjørkedal, VP of End User Business and ITB at Schneider Electric.
Owned by Green Mountain AS, the Tier III+, carrier-neutral data centre is located on the Norwegian island of Rennesøy, near Stavanger. It consists of six data halls, offering a complete white space surface area of 21,000 sq.m, all powered by hydroelectric plants in the surrounding area.
In line with Green Mountain’s green credentials, Schneider Electric created a free cooling system which uses gravity alone to feed water from the local fjords to the server rooms.
“We have high ambitions for Green Mountain AS and it has been essential for us to select contractors that have the most energy efficient and economical solutions available in the market, with effective use of architecture and technology. Hence, after careful consideration, we chose Schneider Electric as our main supplier of IT infrastructure, cooling, power supply and DCIM management of the data centre,” said Knut Molaug, CEO of Green Mountain.
Another Green Mountain site has just been completed in Rjukan, where the sun does not shine throughout winter. The site is also powered by renewable energy sources from local facilities, such as two hydroelectric dams. It is housed an old warehouse, and like the Rennesøy data centre uses free cooling and Schneider’s prefabricated data centre modules.
“Since we opened our first data centre near Stavanger, we have found that there is a massive demand for security, power price stability, sustainability and scalability, so our plans includes investments of £60 million in the data centre at Rjukan over the coming years,” said Molaug.
