Mission Critical had a post on Modular Cooling plants. The post is written by a McQuay employee, so of course it discusses their equipment.
The modular central plant combines a water-cooled chiller with pumps, cooling tower and interconnected piping.
Since June 2007, a total of six Modular Central Plants have provided chilled water to 59 computer room air conditioning units in the 52,500 square foot data center. Each of the modules consists of a 500-ton centrifugal compressor water chiller pre-engineered and pre-assembled with pumps, piping, cooling tower, control panel and associated water treatment system.
Kirchner’s original goal of increased cooling capacity to meet Herakles Data’s projected growth was not only achieved, but also surpassed. “We provide N+1 business solutions for our customers, meaning we meet their needs plus provide redundancy,” he said. “Today, however, we have surpassed that goal because we typically run only two of the four original modular central plants. That results in 2N cooling capacity today available to our data center customers.”
In addition to fast-track construction and commissioning, the new central plants resulted in impressive energy savings compared to the old system. “Our old system used 3,600 kilowatt-hourwatt-hour (kWh)h/ton a day; the new system uses 2,800 kWh/ton a day for a 22 percent reduction in energy,” Stancil said. That reduced energy usage earned Herakles Data a $50,000 rebate from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
Another alternative is TAS’s system.
Chilled Water Comfort Cooling Systems
TAS designs, manufactures, installs / commissions and services modular chilled water plants. Standard product designs range from 200 to 8000 tons for individual units. TAS' highly engineered chilled water plants are designed to facilitate ease of installation and maintenance. TAS takes a holistic systems approach to standard product design. We engineer our chilled water systems for optimized efficiency performance and since we are a single source provider from design to commissioning, we guarantee efficiency performance at system commissioning.
Product scope includes all components normally found in a chilled water plant. Key components include chillers, chilled water pumps, condenser water pumps, MCCs, digital controls, full enclosure, cooling tower and cooling tower support structure. TAS manufactures its chilled water systems in an ISO 9001:2000 quality process factory environment. Given our ability to control all facets of product manufacture and mitigate project schedule risk, such as weather delays and skilled labor shortages, TAS is able to guarantee delivery schedule with LDs (liquidated damages) for non-performance.
Given the economic environment to cut costs, every data center operator should evaluate a modular cooling system as alternative.