Air-circuit breakers for data centres

An ABB Automation Tech (LV Products) product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Nov 27, 2001

M and A Switchgear has incorporated ABB Emax 2000A four pole air-circuit breakers with fully rated neutrals in two massive low voltage switchboard installations for Energis Internet Data Centres

M and A Switchgear, the Bridgwater based electrical control equipment specialist, has incorporated ABB Emax 2000A four pole air-circuit breakers (ACBs) with fully rated neutrals in two massive low voltage switchboard installations for the new Energis Internet Data Centres (IDCs) in Watford and Leeds.

The availability of a fully rated, rather than the usual half-rated, neutral pole made the Emax ACB ideal for providing high-current circuit protection for this particular application where high densities of computer equipment and fluorescent lighting place an increased single-phase loading on the three-phase network.

Founded in 1993, Energis (www.energis.com) is a telecommunications, internet and e-business solutions provider and manages one of Europe's largest web server farms, hosting more than 23,000 websites on over 1,600 dedicated servers.

It provides backbone and internet services for nearly 60 other ISPs and the new Internet Data Centres at Watford and Leeds are part of an expansion programme to enable Energis to further increase its hosting capacity.

The services main contractor for the new Energis IDCs was AMEC Building Services Ltd who awarded M and A Switchgear (www.mandaswitchgear.com) the contract for the design, manufacture and installation of the main site switchboard package.

For each site this comprised an 11kV transformer incomer, 11kV/400V 2MVA cast resin transformer, 400V 4000A switchboard feeder, two LV switchboards(which each supply various site loads with one main 1000A feed) and two UPS switchboards.

All main switchboards were constructed to Form 4 Type 2 standard.

For the Watford site M and A Switchgear also supplied two Power Distribution Units (PDUs), each with integral 36 way TP and N mcb boards, which distribute the power to the end user equipment.

Security of supply is the key consideration for the IDCs, so should the main 11kV feed from the local REC fail a standby generator, with 72 hours of fuel, will start and feed the system automatically.

In addition, two 480kW uninterrupted power supply (UPS) modules with 45 minutes of battery autonomy supply the critical equipment load on each site.

As well as the ABB Emax 2000A four-pole ACBs, the Energis panels also feature ABB Isomax MCCBs ranging from 16A up to 1000A incorporating thermomagnetic and electronic protection releases.

The 11kV incoming circuit breaker on each panel is an ABB HD4 SF6 circuit breaker.

Chris Pratt, Managing Director of M and A Switchgear said: "We standardised on ABB circuit-breakers for the Energis project due to the availability, reliability and general quality of the equipment.

The Emax ACB and Isomax MCCB ranges are very compact, easy to install and the electronic protection extremely versatile.".