Emerson Network Power (www.emersonnetworkpower.com) is constructing an energy–efficient corporate data center at the company's St. Louis, MO campus, with the 35,000–square–foot facility scheduled to open next summer. Based on the facility's architecture and technology infrastructure, Emerson anticipates receiving LEED Silver Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The data center will support the company's $22 billion global network, comprising more than 250 worldwide manufacturing and engineering operations. Also intended as a technology showcase center for current and potential customers, the facility will feature a suite of energy–efficient technologies from Emerson Network Power, including its Liebert, ASCO, Knurr, and Aperture products, interacting with technologies from the world's leading IT companies.
Collectively, Emerson says the technologies comprise a "highly available, reliable and concurrently maintainable physical infrastructure" that can be remotely managed. The data center will have three layers of redundancy, with dual utility feeds, redundant UPS protection, and onsite generators. Additionally, the data center will be scalable, with redundant dual–bus power capacity starting at 1,350 kW and ultimate UPS systems scalability up to 4,050 kW across dual paths. Cooling capacity will be upwards of 300 watts per square foot.
Emerson claims it is one of the first companies to voluntarily participate in the process of earning data center–based green credits in the core areas of energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, materials, resources selection, sustainable site development, and water savings.
Fox Architects, the project's lead architect, estimates that the design will provide Emerson an energy savings of 17.5% over a traditional data center. The energy–saving attributes include daylightingfeatures, a reduced building footprint, and one of the largest roof–top solar arrays used by a data center providing 100 kWpower to the IT load. As IT equipment is installed, Emerson will follow applicable strategies recommended in Emerson Network Power's Energy Logic to yield additional energy savings.
Victor Lee, chief technology officer for Emerson Network Power, comments, "This project gives us a chance to show off how implementation of the strategies and technologies we recommend to our customers can deliver best–in–class business continuity. For example, our recipe for a dynamic critical infrastructure calls for technologies that are flexible, reliable, and operate at the lowest total cost of ownership. We're eager to start sharing the finished product with the world."
The data center is part of a global data center consolidation effort at Emerson that will integrate the operations of more than 100 data centers into four facilities. Many products from several Emerson Network Power centers of expertise will be used.—Matt Vincent