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Carrier-Neutral Data Center is Wired for Success

Jan 24, 2011 5:24 PM, By Stefanie Kure, Senior Associate Editor

KST Electric performs electrical installation work on phase one of the $150-million Austin Data Center 2 (ADC2)

As computer systems and their associated components become increasingly more powerful and sophisticated, so does the requirement for reliable storage of their data. To address this ever-growing need, Data Foundry, an Austin, Texas-based provider of wholesale and retail data center outsourcing, collocation, and disaster recovery services, recently broke ground on what will eventually be a 250,000-sq-ft master-planned, carrier-neutral data center — the first facility of its kind in central Texas.

Located near the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on a 40-acre campus called the Data Ranch, the first phase of this $150-million project, known as the Austin Data Center 2 (ADC2), is a 130,000-sq-ft building scheduled for completion this June.

“We are performing all of the electrical on phase one of ADC2, bringing power into the building, and then distributing it throughout the facility,” says Jeremy Miles, senior project manager for KST Electric, a 600-employee electrical contractor also headquartered in Austin and a recently acquired subsidiary of San Jose, Calif.-based Rosendin Electric.

Part of this installation involves providing flexible power delivery for rooms 2,500 sq ft and larger, with power redundancy from N+1 to 2N+1 configurations. The first phase will feature 12MW of utility power with two redundant 12MW feeds (with generator and UPS backup) into the building and two separate substations, each independently connected to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid. Data and telecom cabling will be installed underground in a concrete-encased duct.

“To help keep us on schedule, we are using building information modeling (BIM) to preplan and prefab all the underground cabling that is going in both outside and inside the facility,” notes Miles. “We’ll do the same with the stub-ups that are located in the building’s walls.”

In addition to the challenge of completing this mission-critical project on time and within budget, KST Electric must perform the installation with the knowledge that its work will be on display to potential data center tenants.

“Data Foundry is using phase one of ADC2 as a sort of showplace to attract clients,” explains Miles. “So not only must all the wiring be hidden, but it must also be installed as neatly and compactly as possible, because certain rooms in the facility will be on display to demonstrate to prospective customers how the power needs of the space can be reconfigured to meet their particular requirements.”

When completed, the Data Ranch will have the capability to deliver more than 100MW of power to more than 1million sq ft of data center space. Additional features will include: end-to-end underground power feeds from diverse substations; dual diverse entry points for power, network and water; and the availability to more than 15 telecom providers.

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