Many of us in the industry have discussed why data centers of the past are changing. I contend that it’s not an unanticipated shift, but merely a return to either a generic or highly bespoke solution for a mainfame computing environment. And if you ever worked in a Cray shop, you know how specific the [Read more]

I’m not the most radical person on the planet. After some consideration, I’ve come to the realization that in an effort to drive energy efficiencies into the data center, we may have inadvertently changed how users view the relationship between the critical utility infrastructure and the hardware and systems they power and cool. While this [Read more]

For those of you who have been following additions to the NEC and have missed the impact of the new Article 708. The intention has been to protect facilities and to provide a certain level of survivability to buildings focused on national defense or vital civil operations. What we have found is that this requires [Read more]

Sorry for the break everyone, but I had some trouble with my Blogspot account, now solved! This post is about the EPO. There’s been a major shift in the industry considering EPO. Presently, the EPO is being negotiated out with the Jurisdiction or, in a longer plan, being excluded as a requirement to NEC 645. [Read more]

I can hear it now. I got equipment from People’s Republic of East Bejesus and I’m worried it will fail! Well, most of what we buy is industrial-grade equipment that bears a lot of 3rd party scrutiny, such as UL or independent lab, not to mention the commissioning we do to systems before we turn [Read more]

No Detail Is Too Insignficant Short blog today. While sitting a series of large-scale cutovers and work arounds for a client, we had a generator fail while one of 14 systems was in maintenance bypass. The facility is preapring for a retrofit, and we were installing some much needed repairs for the site to hold [Read more]

Presented at the 7×24 Exchange National Conference as a break out session in Palm Springs, California, in November 2008.

Why Is Everyone Picking on Electrical?The old joke used to be because we can and often do. Don’t get me wrong. This is not about the age-old argument about electrical vs. mechanical. It’s about looking at the entire building and its energy footprint in parcels, then summarizing them into a logical infrastructure. This is “tail [Read more]

EVERYWHERE you turn today, metrics leap out at you for energy efficiency. What the statistics don’t offer is a normalization of the data when comparing various facilities in various areas. Simply stated, a data center sucking in cold air off the North Atlantic or Baltic Sea and can cool the data center without some form [Read more]