The Grange School & Sports College - Cooling a School - Server Room Cooling

The green & cost effective route to improving your server room environment

Background

The Grange School & Sports College, Warmley, Bristol is a local authority controlled school and sixth form college. Over the past couple of years, the school’s IT & PC resources has grown resulting in a requirement for ever larger server capability. This was identified by the school’s IT department and a cooling system was sought to provide a cost effective solution to meet their requirements both today and the foreseeable future. The server room at The Grange used to be cooled using portable air conditioning units. In line with their energy management strategy rather than installing new refrigeration based air conditioning units, the school wanted to fit a system that would reduce their energy consumption whilst at the same time be more environmentally friendly. Evaporative coolers were considered to provide an obvious solution.

The Design

A single evaporative cooling unit will provide the school with up to 30kW of cooling capacity more than meeting the demand of their existing server and providing spare capacity for future expansion. With the patented attemperation system a constant temperature air supply to the data centre is achieved. This is achievable using the EcoCooling CREC control panel. The returning warm air is mixed with ambient or evaporatively cooled air, using a single damper. When the external temperature rises over a set point the evaporative cooling is enabled to ensure either the typical target air supply temperature of 22°C is achieved or slightly over during the very hottest periods. A standard CREC module will supply ~3 cubic meters per second of air which can support over 35kW of equipment load. The school are expecting to save 90% on their energy bills compared to an equivalent air-conditioning system.

“ By using free cold air from outside and using it to cool our data centre we will save money in the future years to come." “Having had the system for a while now, the difference is astounding. With our old refrigerant units, we had problems getting the units to cool the equipment, especially in summer months. Those worries are now a thing of the past as the EcoCooling unit literally blasts cool air where we need it.” “Vent-Tech worked closely with us and the installation team were very accommodating and professional.” “The Grange now has a system that delivers exactly what we were after, without the hassle, long term cost or problems traditional cooling brings.”

Andrew Thorne Director of IT at The Grange School