Smarter Ways to Bring Power to Critical Power Facilities

12.19.02 Mike Hellmann, Marketing Manager, Critical Power Markets, Siemens Energy &
Automation

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They are the engines that are fueling the E
phenomenal growth of the Internet economy. m
They’re also the foundation upon which a
information is fast becoming the new utility of i
the 21st century. Today’s data centers are l
T
highly secure, highly reliable, and highly expensive information h
fortresses built to move information with maximum efficiency—and i
keep it moving no matter what. s Comment On Article
A
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Running the gamut from Internet hotels that host computer t
services for Internet service providers to telecom carrier hubs, co- h
location centers, server farms, and private enterprise data centers, o
these world-class facilities are custom-designed with raised floors, r
sophisticated environmental control systems, seismically braced 
racks, and redundant power systems to ensure failsafe site
performance 24/7. 
About The Author

In a world where minutes of downtime can translate to losses in  More Articles By This
the millions of dollars, when it comes to delivering power, the Author
guarantee of reliability and capacity is a leading priority. As a
result, data centers are among the most power-hungry of today’s
critical power environments, consuming many times the energy
required to power commercial office space. This is especially true
of the massive data servers that provide the infrastructure for web
and Internet hosting services, leasing rack space for some of the world’s most powerful
computer servers.

Depending on the nature of the IT equipment and its packing density, power demand in
these raised floor environments can range from 100 watts to a stunning 300 watts per
square foot, with an average load factor of 200 watts per square foot—a lot of concentrated
power. In this environment, the appetite for power is rivaled only by an insatiable need for
reliability.

According to Henry Hansen, Jr., Senior Corporate Engineer with Shooshanian Engineering of
Boston, the demand for capacity shows no signs of diminishing as high-powered servers and
storage devices become even more powerful and memory-intensive. He notes, “Just from
1998 to now, the number of disk drives in the same physical size data storage unit has
increased from 128 to 384. Today’s storage devices are equipped with exponentially more
memory and storage space, drawing many times the electrical load. Because they’re smaller,
where you once had four to seven servers per rack, you’re now supporting 21 servers per
rack. Even though the new devices are more energy-efficient, when you go from four servers
per rack at 300 watts to 21 at 100 watts, more components in the same footprint equal
increased power load density.”

As a result, the onus is on contractors, builders, and owners of these facilities to assure
tenants and prospective tenants that their IT equipment, servers, and processes are safe.
That the power will not go out, the servers will not go down and data will keep moving. So
they do whatever it takes to assure customers that the facility will support future load
requirements, no matter how quickly the data center fills out, or how many servers the data
hotel ultimately sleeps.

Many data centers have built their businesses based on the assurance of plentiful power
capacity and ironclad reliability, incorporating guarantees of minimum levels of both into
their contracts—at the expense of efficiency and cost savings. Of course, for every upside
there is a downside, and in the data center world, the downside of promising and delivering
power reliability in the “high nines”—99.9999 percent uptime—doesn’t come cheap.

Costly Propositions—Promising Redundancy, Reliability and Capacity

Capacity planning is one of the trickiest challenges design engineers and builders face. The
data center must be supplied with a reliable and redundant source of power because IT
components subjected to frequent power interruptions fail at a much higher rate. This
explains why many data centers go to extremes to assure reliability, installing several layers
of costly backup and redundancy with heavy investments in equipment—switchgear,
switchboards, UPS battery backups, and parallel generators.

Assuring the reliability of the incoming power source means installing multiple sources of
incoming power with dual utility feeds, usually from different substations or power utility
grids that are interconnected to the facility’s main load via breakers. Dual unit substations
(transformers) are then stepped down to deliver power to the server cages and cabinets. So,
if one power source or high voltage line goes down, the system can switch to the redundant
feed in a fraction of a cycle—a matter of milliseconds—without losing any electrical load.
Likewise, if a transformer fails, the backup system picks up the load instantaneously.

As a result, the cost of energy can account for a large portion of a company’s cost of doing
business. And one of the biggest costs of delivering redundant power to the electrical
distribution system is in installing oversized transformers rated to accommodate high-
capacity loads, redundancy, and harmonic current. Transformers, which step down voltage
from transmission voltages to distribution voltages that can be used by the data center’s
electrical distribution system, come in “sizes” ranging from pole mounted 10 KVA units at the
low end to 1000 MVA generator step-up transformers at the high end.

To support future expansion, most data centers install transformers with ratings of between
1000 KVA and 3750 KVA, based on calculations that factor in the current load and the
potential maximum load anticipated for five to seven years down the road. The downside of
super-sizing is that when transformers carry light loads relative to their nameplate sizes, the
considerable losses that result from energizing the magnetic core drive efficiency down.

According to Hansen, “We have found considerable disparity between the data center
equipment nameplate load and actual demand load. Some of the devices have measured
continuous demand load values of 40 to 50 percent of nameplate rated load with short
duration peaks of up to 80 percent or more for servers and storage units.” Clearly, there are
reasons to optimize load efficiency. The following table illustrates the advantages of
rightsizing transformers to optimize efficiency

Standard 3750 kva vs. 3000 kva Optimized Transformer Design

Comments:
The load is based on 3750 kva basis. The smaller substation is more efficient up to 1800 kva

Electrical Equipment 5 low voltage substations Total Cost of Ownership and

Present Value Analysis

Conclusions: Incremental Investment Savings: $60450 Combined Lifecycle Present Worth

Savings: $ 91388

Comments:
Based on initial data center loading, transformer purchase price, and transformer efficiency
assumptions, the net present value delta between standard and optimized transformers can
be substantial

Compounding the issue, to compensate for the negative effects of harmonic loads—the
electrical ’trash‘ generated and fed back into the electrical system when AC power is
converted to DC to run the servers—the transformers are sized another 30 to 50 percent
bigger. So the high purchase and installation costs are further inflated by the lifecycle costs
of running at lower efficiency levels, wasted electricity, and load losses that occur when
power passes through the transformer. Clearly, there is a need for a better way to balance
the cost of serving the load and losses from transforming energy.

Rightsizing Transformers for More Efficient and Cost-Effective Power Delivery

All of this begs the larger question—can you assure capacity and reliability while managing
losses and controlling costs? The answer is yes. And the key is to optimize the costs of
energy, reliability, maintenance, and installation. To achieve a better total cost of ownership,
many experts, including proponents of the Siemens Totally Integrated Power concept,
advocate sizing transformers to step down voltages as close to load as possible by optimizing
rather than oversizing the transformer.

Smaller, optimized transformers compensate for harmonics and minimize the losses incurred
by energizing the transformers (core losses). So, they can be sized more efficiently and can
be implemented as part of a modular data center design that assures scalability, enabling
highly complex systems to be built from smaller, more manageable building blocks.

Marcus Hassen, an electrical engineer with Clark, Richardson & Biskup Consulting Engineers,
Inc. (CRB), a Kansas City, Missouri based consulting engineering firm that specializes in
facility and process design for high technology industries confirms, “There is definitely a
tendency on the part of owners to want to over-design power distribution solutions. While
reliability is still the number one consideration, where we formerly saw specs with
transformers rated at K20 to compensate for harmonics, we’re seeing more specs using
different solutions to optimize the transformer and reduce harmonic current. Likewise, we’re
designing scalable power distribution plans that let us add transformers in the future to
support higher power densities.”

Clearly, in the transformer equation, optimization equals efficiency, and the most efficient
way to deliver energy to critical power facilities is to buy what you need today and add
capacity incrementally as the data center fills out. This extensible approach contradicts the
conventional method of determining power capacity based on watts per square foot.
However, it makes more economic sense on several counts. First, the initial costs of
purchasing and installing smaller transformers are lower than that of larger ones. Second,
lowering the initial cost enables you to recoup the time value of money. Third, you can
eventually buy the capacity you need by purchasing a second transformer when you need it
—four, five or six years down the road. So, instead of running a large transformer at 20 or 30
percent capacity or less, running a right-sized transformer at between 50 and 75 percent
capacity can result in dramatic savings.

So optimized transformers and modular designs save money, but what about capacity and
reliability? When you shift the focus to efficiency and cost savings, are you not reversing the
previous equation at the expense of reliability? Not if you specify transformers optimized to
operate at low temperature rises to prevent overheating, to support higher loads, to carry
and dissipate harmonic current, and to manage the magnetic core current, minimizing the
losses that contribute most to low efficiency for lower loads. Because optimized transformers
are sized more appropriately for the loads they carry, incur smaller core losses, and use less
energy, they perform more efficiently than larger transformers. As for redundancy, they can
be used in redundant configurations to deliver the reliability that critical power applications
require just as easily as larger transformers.

According to Shooshanian’s Hansen, “Factoring in low power load support spaces and the
diversity of demand between building and mechanical equipment power loads lets you lower
the service system’s design capacity from a total based on “connected” plus growth and
safety factors to a demand total that includes reasonable growth factors. Combine this
demand load philosophy with an algorithm for calculating power consumption for the
mechanical systems, lights, and miscellaneous loads and a scalable, modular design
becomes possible. The result is lower overall design power load calculations and manageable
service transformer sizes, that allow for growth and reliability. You also must designate future
space to accommodate additional transformers and equipment for growth, which enables
selection of smaller equipment ratings, by eliminating the need to oversize now for potential
load growth.”

Know What You’re Using...and What You’re Losing

To remain competitive in the data center business, the current trend is to do and pay
whatever it takes to promise and deliver reliability. However, as the data center industry
matures, transforming a competitive foothold into a competitive edge will mean delivering
reliability in the most cost-effective manner. Today, competitive advantage goes to those
who can deliver reliability. Tomorrow, the next level of competition will reward those data
centers that excel at providing reliability at the lowest possible cost. This trend will take the
concept of rightsizing transformers a step further, maximizing both reliability and efficiency
by incorporating a power monitoring solution that enables intelligent monitoring and
management of power consumption down to the rack level.

With an intelligent, integrated power solution, usage and costs can be tracked and measured
throughout the data center by tenant, simplifying the process of identifying losses and their
causes. Access to real-time performance data allows data center owners and managers to
balance all of the components of total cost of ownership, making whatever modifications are
required to return efficiency to peak levels whenever necessary.

In the end, balancing reliability and redundancy with cost savings comes down to
numbers. With the proper calculations, a modular approach to right-sizing transformers,
and the ability to keep a finger on the electrical pulse of the power system simply adds
up to a better bottom line.
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