Newsletter

Spring is here!

We are very pleased to issue our spring newsletter! By: Rick Einhorn and Brian Whelan

In late January, we announced that EYPMCF would be joining Ramboll. We couldn’t be more excited about this next chapter and joining this leading global engineering consultancy.  Joining Ramboll has given us the global platform needed to service our clients around the world as they grow and expand. It also gives us a much broader portfolio of capabilities to offer our clients, including ESG consulting and due diligence to support data center acquisitions. We look forward to continuing to expand our reach across the world as part of this terrific platform. We are also extremely impressed by the culture, focus on employees, and dedication to sustainability that Ramboll has, which is so important to our client base and the data center community in general. Please don’t hesitate to ask us for information or a live discussion on all of our combined capabilities in this space. At the same time, it is business as usual at EYPMCF as we continue to drive thought leadership in the space and develop new innovative approaches to design and assurance in data centers. In this issue of the newsletter, we have included a new white paper on embodied carbon, and blog pieces on water conservation, air quality permits, and Blockchain data centers specifications. There are also new case studies about new client work around the globe. In addition, we are thrilled to announce that our own Steve Shapiro, PE will be speaking at the upcoming 7x24 event in June. Lastly, we hope to see all of you at the industry events we are sponsoring this month – DCD in NYC, and Data Cloud in Monaco. Best – Rick and Brian

Press Release

Blogs & White Papers

White Paper Embodied Carbon Considerations for Data Centers By: Brevan Reyher, EIT Climate change continues to affect our environment at an increasing rate while our understanding of the impact between human activities and the increase in measured greenhouse gases (GHG) is becoming clearer. The demand for IT services is contributing to immense growth within the data center sector and this contributes to increasing carbon impacts from construction and operations. In terms of built out area and overall energy usage, data centers currently remain a small subset of commercial and industrial emissions. However, it does not take much imagination to see a future where they are one of the highest consumers of energy and resources. As more systems move online, such as most things leisure, education and work-related, contrasted by a reduction in commercial real estate, an increase in data center carbon footprint can be forecast. Blog Blockchain Data Center, Much more forgiving than a standard Data Center By: Steve Shapiro, PE What does that mean? That depends on whether we are mining cryptocurrency or performing blockchain calculations for other purposes, the process can be stopped and started at will, without losing any data, and theoretically, any money. Blockchain technology or distributed ledger technology can be used for tracking data points items, recording transactions (mining) or any other process that requires maintaining databases. It is a decentralized process and can be done anywhere and everywhere, all at the same time. Because it is a distributed process, infrastructure reliability is not as big a concern for blockchain as it is for standard data processing. If we are processing in one location and power is lost, when power is restored, the processing begins again. Granted, while the blockchain is not being mined, no profit is made. The cost of infrastructure and power consumption plays an important part in the profitability of the mining process. When blockchain is used for enterprise applications, as for a hospital or a bank, then the processing cost is not the issue, but the reliability of continued processing becomes more important.

Blog Water Conservation in Data Centers  By: Scott Wilson, PE Data center cooling system designs of the past have used a great deal of water to achieve a low Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) while at the same time fitting the client’s capital expense (CAPEX) and operating cost (OPEX) business goals. Today, there is mounting pressure to reduce water consumption as well. We are starting to hear corporations pledging to be “water positive” which means restoring more water than what they use. In most climates (except for the most humid or most cold environments), the benefits of cooling using the evaporation of water is well established and beneficial from an energy consumption standpoint in all but the most humid or most cold environments. Unfortunately, what is also often true is that water can be expensive or have limited/inconsistent availability in dry climates. Blog Data Centers - Strategizing for Flexible Air Quality Permits By: Ali Farnoud A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…air quality permits were simply a few pages allowing the construction and operation of data centers. With the exponential increase in the number of data centers across the United States and the number of emergency generators employed, air quality permits have grown increasingly complex, resulting in conditions that could impact operational flexibility. However, data centers may utilize various tools to allow more flexibility in their air permits. For example, a limit of 4,000 hours per year may obstruct a data center operator’s ability to run the engines during an emergency for a facility that operates 120 engines, whereas the same facility may not feel as stifled with a limit of 700,000 gallons of fuel consumption per year, which meets the exact same regulatory purpose. In a world of convoluted air quality permits, data centers should strategize the approach to air permitting early in the design process to ensure that they will not be blindsided by impractical air permit conditions.

Sample Recent Projects

Data Center Prototype EYP MCF, Part of Ramboll was selected to provide a master plan for conversion of the existing warehouse building for reuse as a bitcoin mining/blockchain facility and/or data center. Detailed design will be in the second phase of the project. The requested services included a concept design to establish the project criteria and to select a preferred option for continued design implementation.  Based on the design parameters of the New Brunswick concept design, EYP MCF, Part of Ramboll will develop prototypical master plan concept designs for four (4) incremental sized facilities. These prototypical designs would then be applied to and be site-adapted for future data centers from this same provider. The scale designs includes: Small – 6MW, Medium – 20MW to 50MW, Large 20MW to 50MW, and Very Large 50M+'s.  Redistributing Surplus Heat Fjernvarme Fyn, Denmark’s third-largest district heating company, was looking for a designer of a heat pump that redistributes energy from the adjacent Tietgenbyen data center to the district heating network of the city of Odense. The project provided heat to more than 7,000 homes, reducing the city’s reliance on coal power, and supported Fjernvarme Fyn’s goal of providing 100% renewable energy by 2030. A water-based above- and below-ground piping circuit transfers surplus heat from heat exchangers in the data center to the heat pump installation. There, large electrical-driven ammonia heat pumps raise the heat temperature to 70-75°C, suitable for the city’s district heating network. Distribution pumps supply the recovered heat to the network.

Commissioning 5 Data Centers   EYP MCF, Part of Ramboll worked with the General Contractor team providing commissioning support and quality management for five greenfield data centers in Virginia. Each data center was approximately +35MW of IT. EYP MCF, Part of Ramboll performed receipt inspection, ensured that all equipment had been properly started up, all inspections and tests had been completed, all issues resolved and closed out and all inspections, tests, startup forms and documentation had been filled out, complete and uploaded into the commissioning data base so that each data center buildout could move into the Acceptance Phase.  Building Trust with a repeated client The project consisted in the completion of a 6MW data hall build out inclusive of the power and cooling plant, power and cooling distribution infrastructure. The data center is a block redundant design employing four (4) to make three (3) Electrical Modules. The todal square footage was 240,000 SF. EYP MCF, Part of Ramboll team worked with the owner’s team to effectively guide the commissioning process for the project, providing an unbiased, objective view of the installation, operation, performance, and documentation of the project’s equipment and systems.

Tier IV Data Center Upgrade  EYP MCF provided Design it Right (DIT) services for a peer review of a data center in the city of Haifa, Israel. As part of the Peer review of the conceptual data center design the project included the creation of additional design concepts for upgrading all or a portion of the facility to an Uptime Institute level Tier IV. Each design concept includes the Capex/Opex ROM budget to implement above the cost of the Tier III conceptual design, and a high-level comparative Total Cost of Ownership for the ROM budgets, for a 10-year lifecycle. IT/OT Integrated Automation Standards Design EYP MCF, Part of Ramboll was selected to provide the development of Integrated Automation Standards including a Basis of Design and detailed specifications to this colocation provider.  The develop Standards for all items related to low voltage systems, network infrastructure, controls, etc. to be used in future data center construction by this client.  The areas included in this design are: Building Management System (BMS), Electrical Power Management Systems (EPMS), Security Systems IT/Cabling/Telecom Systems

PANELS

Covid and its impact on data center construction and equipment procurement Steve Shapiro, PE Partner, EYP MCF, Part of Ramboll

This presentation is a portfolio case study of the construction impacts due to labor (shortages/on-site procedures required), procurement (supply chain issues as well as manufacturing) and facility design relative to special precautions required during construction and operations to deal with COVID in the data center environment. The case study will revolve around the construction and procurement issues associated with the build out of a campus collocation environment of over 150MW of critical IT load as well as others.

Register here

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Sustainability Corner

Download the latest white papers ■ Towards more sustainable data center design using a CHP case study ■ Demand response opportunities for data center embedded generation and energy storage systems ■ Reaching for Net-Zero: Achieving Zero Carbon Data Centers by Decentralizing Consensus of Power Supply Amongst Utility and Microgrid Providers ■ The Case for Natural Gas Generators ■ West 7 Center: Using a Data Center Water Side Economizer on an existing facility to reduce water and energy usage ■ ​Infrastructure Sustainability Options and Revenue Opportunities for Data Centers

Careers

We are hiring! As a pioneer and leader in Data Center Strategy, Planning, Design, Integration, Commissioning and Testing, EYP MCF continues to expand our services working with enterprise, hyperscale, and service providers throughout the U.S and across the globe.   Our career-growth-minded opportunities offer exciting project work utilizing leading-edge technology and innovations.

Contact us

info@eypmcfinc.com +1-917-952-2134 ‌ ‌ ‌ Contact Us