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About the Sheffield Data Centre: Power

The electrical supply and distribution system is one of the most critical operations in the Sheffield Data Centre.

Design and capacity planning at the earliest stages of construction ensured a power distribution system which is both highly reliable and scalable for all data centre services.

On site 11,000 Volt substation

The Sheffield Data Centre is directly connected to a YEDL substation located on site. The substation sits on the YEDL local ring, and is capable of delivering all the power to the Data Centre for now and future capacity needs.

Decentralised UPS Protection

All critical services, (core / rack networking, security / fire alarms, access control, customer racks) are protected by APC decentralised Uninterruptible Power Supplies.

Each rack has it’s own UPS, eliminating any Single Point of Failure from affecting the whole data centre. This approach of UPS deployment ensures customers get access to 100% of the UPS protected power their rack is entitled too, as well as allowing limitless capacity expansion without affecting existing customers or risking disruption centrally.

All UPS’s are double-conversion, meaning they constantly clean and regulate the power entering the racks, preventing damage to equipment.

Each 16A UPS is provided and maintained for by us at no extra cost to the customer.

Rack PDU’s

Each rack is powered by up to two 16A feeds from 32A commando sockets under the raised floor. Each 32A socket is fed individually from our distribution board, and is protected with its own 32A MCB. The dedicated circuit breaker gives isolation to the rack in the unlikely event of an electrical fault, prevents disruption to other racks and equipment, and allows engineers to work on the fault in safety.

PDU’s in each rack have standard UK “three pin” sockets. Other PDU’s are available on request.

Diesel Generator

The Sheffield Data Centre is protected against utility (mains) outages by an 100kVA onsite diesel generator.

In the most complex engineering project to-date, the generator was delivered, installed, connected, tested and commissioned without any service disruption or outage.

Utility power is constantly monitored and Automatic Transfer Switches failover power from utility to generator without human intervention. Engineers are automatically paged if the generator is started out of hours.

The generator has enough fuel for 12 hours running, with fuel re-supply arrangements in place.

Testing

• Each UPS is tested once per month, and runtime calibrations done quartetly.
• A generator start test is conducted every 2 weeks to ensure "first time start".
• A full failover generator test is conducted once per month.

Any issues identified during testing are addressed and resolved immediately.