University of Colorado Boulder
Boulder, Colorado
Located in the Research Park on CU Boulder’s East Campus, the Space Science Center (SPSC) data center was primarily created to consolidate departmental/administrative computing resources and to support research and academic activities. The SPSC data center serves as the central data center for the entire CU Boulder campus and will eventually house all campus computer servers.
In addition to offering robust and reliable infrastructure, the SPSC data center is remarkably energy efficient. It currently has a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio of just 1.08 at part load; data centers typically have to be at near-full load to achieve this level of PUE. (This level of PUE means that more than 90% of energy for the entire facility is being used for computing.)
Project highlights include:
- Entire data center room serves as a cold isle
- Fan bank on the end of each enclosed hot isle discharges exhaust outside through the building louvers; the fan bank delivers both redundancy and efficiency
- Energy-efficient direct evaporative cooling
- 97% efficient UPS (even at low load)
- Extremely low pressure drop intake and exhaust
- Extremely low power ECM-driven exhaust fans
RMH served as the project’s prime design consultant and mechanical/electrical engineer.
Awards
Colorado Construction, Silver Hard Hat Award, Outstanding Mechanical/Electrical Project, 2007