Generator Delays May Slow Data Center Projects 257
miller60 writes "The data center building boom is causing backlogs for new generator orders, with some companies reporting delivery delays of up to a year for new 2,000kw units, which are the current standard for mission-critical facilities. Generator availability is 'the No. 1 thing that will drive your construction schedules,' according to Equinix, which is building centers in three major markets. 'This will be a big issue for the next wave of data center builds,' says another industry executive. Used generators and smaller units tend to be more available than the 2 megawatt units, but companies targeting the enterprise sector may be wary of relaying on used units or smaller generators than those powering competing facilities."
I can understand completely (Score:4, Informative)
not on my project (Score:4, Informative)
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
Add to that the changes and parts necessary to change engines geared to creating propulsion to engines geared to creating electricity.
I doubt any company who considers their data center a key component of thier infrastructure to risk their backup solution on an untested refurbished generator.
Re:not on my project (Score:3, Informative)
What are the 4MW units if not diesel? If you're using Gas Turbines, that may explain why you didn't have the same supply problems.
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
Your question on two generators vs. one: Redundancy does NOT come from two half sized units doing a single job, it comes from two FULL sized units each doing half the job. Having two half sized generator units means losing one will cause failure. With a 10,000HR MTBF per unit (rough number used for demonstration) you get a system MTBF of 5,000HR, NOT what I would call redundant! You would need at least 3/2 redundancy (3 generators doing the work of 2) to have a reasonably reliable replacement for a single large unit.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Easy, just buy... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:2, Informative)
You'd be surprised at how much the average load in KW/sq ft has increased in the last several years for a datacenter. Moore's law is FIRMLY in place and it's getting harder and harder to provide adequate, clean, redundant power in critical environments. Server manufacturers are really upping the ante on power consumption which in turn ups the ante on cooling the space(s).
As for your question "wouldn't it make sense to get two smaller units?" , the short answer is no. Mainly, you'd have to have more electrical components (switchgear, breakers, transfer switches, etc) in order to have more than one, plus you've now got another generator to maintain and you're going to need the physical space for it (and all the gear associated with it which is quite a lot). Add to that all the safety equipment you need (FM-200 fire supression, CO2 fire suppresion, Building Automation monitoring, fuel level/leakage detection) and you get really expensive really quickly.
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DC power? (Score:2, Informative)
On the downstream side of this second ATS (the one that switched between the redundant power company feeds and the generator feed), there would be the redundant UPS network, which would in turn feed a different type of transfer switch before heading to the actual critical load in the data center. Each of these multiple redundant UPS's were provided backup power with large strings of batteries. A typical 800KVA UPS would have 3-4 strings of 40 batteries each. Each of these batteries would cost around $100-250, and weigh about 100 lbs. The data centers I worked on, which were nowhere near as large as some of the MS or Google data centers described in the article, had between 4-16 independent, redundant UPS's.
How long would this huge amount of batteries keep the UPS up at full load in the event of a power outage?
About 15 minutes, if you were lucky and had batteries at the top end of their charge cycle.
The whole purpose to having the UPS redundancy and massive battery backup is to give the emergency generators enough time to start and come online.
When I was working at MGE, a typical figure we were told was that a minute of downtime for some of these data centers can cost the datacenter well over a million dollars in lost revenue, and immediate termination of the CIO (or whatever equivalent) of the company. I'm not sure how accurate this was, but it seems reasonable considering how much money goes through some of these places in a day.
Re:2 MEGAwatts?!?! (Score:3, Informative)
Harder than it sounds (Score:2, Informative)
Also, a 1MW generator is pretty large, as is the switchgear and any fuel storage tanks associated with it. As far as the UPS's, true, they will take care of brownouts and frequency errors, but you want the power coming in (either utility or generator) to be as clean as possible so that you're not beating the shit out of your batteries every few minutes to take care of spikes. Batteries do have a shelf life and they're not cheap.
Clearing up a couple of misconceptions.... (Score:5, Informative)
There are many facilities out there with 10-30 2MW generators. I personally worked on a facility that had 18. 12 were for "critical load", that is, things fed via UPS's. This included all of the servers and networking equipment, the NOC, emergency lighting, fire supression systems and soforth. The other 6 were for "emergency load", these were things that did not need UPS protection (they could go down), just not for long. Virtually all of this load was air conditioning. So when the power went out the A/C's went off and came back 30-60 second later on generator, while the servers and all stayed up the same time.
While big, it's far from the largest facility out there.
Now, why would you buy one generator? Well, many buildings use bus variations (the whole N+1, or N+2 thing). So you build your data center for all 18 generators (as above), but install 6 and 3, or half the capacity. You now wait for the building to fill to 25-30%, and then start adding more generators, one at a time. However, they now have to be matched to the other generators.
Now, why are data center generators special? Well, to switch from one AC source to another the two loads must be approximately in phase (there is some tolerance, but it's small). So in order to be able to switch between generators, switch from UPS to generator, and all that other stuff you need additional circuitry to keep the generator just so. While the engine block and generator were the same as say a diesel locomotive, there were some additional sensors, lots of additional computer control, and some additional quick start features.
Most sites want their backup generators to be "ready to load" in 15-30 seconds. Indeed, several manufacturers make 10 second ready to load units. However that requires things like engine oil and coolant heaters that basically keep the entire motor warm 24x7x365. These are not found on industrial generators or locomotives.
So, they really are special, high tech tight tolerance units designed to work in a system. When you connect to WoW or your other large game you're probably one one of a thousand servers run by that company, who is one of but hundreds of companies in the larger colo facilities. It's not uncommon to find 50,000 servers under a single roof. So you need lots, and lots, of 2MW generators.
Well, yes and no (Score:4, Informative)
Your product is interesting but there is a difference. The reason the cost per KW of engines over about 500KW starts to rise is that they are designed for very long life. Unlike gas engines, where when you get outside the cylinder size range of about 50-500cc things start to go downhill, Diesels scale to enormous cylinder sizes but, because the mean piston speed needs to be constant, power goes up as the 2/3 root of cylinder volume. Mass scales more closely to volume, so mass rises faster than output. However, the benefit is that the wear life of a larger cylinder is much greater, because it can tolerate larger amounts of linear wear before blowby becomes excessive.
The implications are that while the cost per installed KW of your multi-engine plant is about the same as that of a single 2MW unit (because of the additional switching and control gear) it will not have the same service life and its lifetime cost per KW is higher.
Correctly and honestly, you describe your generators as backup. But larger units in the 2MW and over range can be used as primary generators. That's the difference. As somebody else has observed elsewhere, large units can be remote controlled by electricity utilities for handling load peaks. This means that their asset utilisation can be much higher than standby generators in well designed stationary applications. The lifetime cost per KWH of a backup generator can be very high because its first cost is amortised over low running hours.
Fact is, 2MW isn't a big Diesel. It's portable power (as used in trains and boats.) That's why supply and demand is likely to vary according to major events like earthquakes and wars.
At my last job.. (Score:2, Informative)
In the summer, they would sometimes run them during peak periods. I was told that they generated enough power to run the datacenter (which is one of the largest in the midwest), plus sell enough power back onto the grid to earn a sizeable kickback.
Technology is cool.