New data centre for London nearly halves the energy used by data centres and is Europe’s first to be independently certified as Tier III

Fujitsu Services, one of Europe’s leading IT services companies, will this week open its newest secure data centre. The £44 million data centre has proven environmental and sustainability credentials at its core – not only is it the first in Europe to be independently certified to the Uptime Institute’s international Tier III standard*, but it will nearly halve the energy used by previous data centres. 

Based within 35 miles of London it will serve the data centre needs for public and private organisations across both the UK and Europe, helping customers to overcome their data centre capacity problems, saving them from the lengthy delays and local planning restrictions involved in building or extending their own data centre facilities.

•   The new data centre is a brown field development utilising a refurbished warehouse, to further reduce the environmental impact compared to a new building on green fields.
•   When fully loaded the data centre will achieve a power usage efficiency (PUE) rating of 1.6 (62% DCiE)** compared to previous data centres at PUE 3.0. (33% DCiE) - this is  nearly double the efficiency of previous data centres.

The data centre has been equipped with high efficiency mechanical and electrical infrastructure that offers the best return on investment for Fujitsu’s customers. The data centre’s new features will save enough electricity to power 2,000 households a year. These  features include:
-   Evaporation towers and heat exchangers more efficiently remove heat from the data centre systems than traditional air conditioning systems.
-   Heat pumps pre-heat incoming fresh air up to operational temperatures as it enters the data centre, reusing heat extracted from the technical halls.
-   Spray humidification - the technical hall air uses low energy spray humidifiers in the air inlets to the technical halls, instead of traditional steam humidification.
-   Variable fans and pumps in the cooling system make a significant energy saving even when the data centre is at full capacity, by matching the cooling provided to the actual cooling needs of the data halls.
-   Diesel Rotary UPS (DRUPS) maintain the electricity supply to the whole data centre when a GRID blackout occurs. DRUPS consume less electricity than current UPS systems – providing a constant saving in energy usage every year.

Additionally, Fujitsu will reduce the power consumption of the customer IT systems housed in the new data centre through an IT Optimisation Programme. By consolidating the IT systems within the data centre power consumption and cost savings of up to 50% can be achieved. When complete the IT optimisation programmes will save enough power for up to 4,000 homes each year. 

In total Fujitsu’s new data centre facility and IT optimisation programmes will each year save enough electricity to power up to 6,000 homes, equivalent to 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and significantly reduce the cost of IT for business.

Martin Provoost, Fujitsu Services head of data centres said: “Fujitsu’s new data centre combines high resilience and high efficiency, which is difficult to achieve as these two factors often oppose each other. Attaining high resilience requires more redundant infrastructure, which in turn consumes more energy. However, through new proven technology, Fujitsu’s London North data centre achieves both the optimum resilience level and a leading efficiency rating.”