New Data Centre To Help With Future Ecosystem

Data centre hosting specialist TeleCityGroup has built a brand new and highly redundant data centre in Paris, whose waste heat will help scientists establish what plants and fauna are best suited for the region’s climate in fifty years time.

Speaking to eWEEK Europe, Stéphane Duproz – the country manager (France) for TelecityGroup – explained that the new data centre, dubbed Condorcet, was designed and built to be one of the most technically advanced and energy-efficient data centres in Europe.

It will provide 3,400 square metres of customer space and 6.4MW of total customer power. “It is a totally new build,” said Duproz. “This really makes a difference as we were able to identify all our needs with total freedom, without being constrained by an existing building.”

“The site had a former warehouse which we considered using as a data centre, but we soon realised it would way better to demolish it and build a new one,” he added.

Duproz said that the carrier-neutral data centre makes use of free cooling to reduce energy consumption, as well as a white roof to mitigate solar gain, and that it had been designed at every level to maximise both energy efficiency and operational performance. These innovations mean that Condorcet will consume significantly less power than a standard data centre infrastructure, equivalent to an annual reduction in power consumption of 28 million kWh, or 2,500 tonnes of CO2 per year.

“The amount of carbon reduction is just amazing,” said Duproz. He then went to explain that Condorcet is also highly redundant, power-wise. “Technically, the level of redundancy is extremely high, and is unique in France for commercial data centres. It is the first in my knowledge in France to have two separate electricity feeds from EDF, each of which are fully dedicated to TelecityGroup, so there are no other customers on that cable,” he said. “It is rare to have two separate feeds from two separate EDF stations, which are fully dedicated.”

Besides the two separate electricity feeds, Condorcet of course has its own power generators with enough fuel for three days. However, on top of this, Duproz explained that Condorcet also makes use of a fuel cell to power the site’s security systems, so that if there was a major power outage lasting more than three days, and the generators stopped working, the site would still be secured.

“We tested a fuel cell as alternative source of energy, which consumes only Hydrogen to produce electricity, and water as waste, which is extremely environment-friendly,” said Duproz. “I would be not be surprised if we are the first in France and Europe to use a fuel cell in this capacity.”