Green Mountain doubles its Norway colocation capacity

Green Mountain AS has awarded Schneider Electric a significant order to deliver data centre infrastructure to support increased capacity at its two Norwegian sites in Telemark and Stavanger. The modular solution being provided by Schneider Electric incorporates the latest innovations in air economised cooling, as well as high efficiency UPS with Li-Ion battery back-up.

Green Mountain has specialised in delivering high-end data centre services to demanding enterprise and wholesale customers around the world. Its award-winning facilities are Tier III certified by the Uptime Institute, and utilise 100% renewable hydropower for high efficiency, zero CO₂ operations and cooling. Existing customers include banks, energy, Cloud & IT service providers, government agencies and large enterprises.

“Green Mountain is growing quickly, so we are making two major investments in Rennesøy and Rjukan,” said company CSO, Svein Atle Hagaseth. “To meet the specific needs of our customers, we need to bring new data centre capacity online rapidly. Our experience of working with Schneider Electric makes them a natural partner for us to turn to in order to expedite this project.”

The first element of the staged project, and the larger prefabricated data centre investment is scheduled to go live at the Rjukan site by April 1^st, 2019. In addition to the Schneider Electric Data Centre Power and Cooling modules, Schneider Electric will also be providing technical – or ‘white’ – space, plus electrical distribution equipment and MV and LV switchgear.

Charlie Timmerman, VP IT Division, Northern Europe at Schneider Electric commented, “We’re delighted to extend our partnership with Green Mountain with the expansion of its two high profile data centre sites. It is the result of a superb team effort, bringing together the competencies of data centre expert teams within our Energy and IT Divisions.”

The infrastructure to provision the upgraded capacity will require up to 15 state-of-the-art Schneider Electric Data Centre Power and Cooling modules. The benefits of the prefabricated, pre-engineered modular approach are well established, and include factory integration and testing to simplify and speed up onsite installation, as well as ensure more predictable and reliable operations. The containerised solutions are being constructed at Schneider Electric’s Barcelona manufacturing plant and will be delivered by road.

Green Mountain has had an exceptional year growing its customer base. With a large majority of growth coming from international companies, Green Mountain has secured business from new and existing customers in all its strategic segments, including Cloud/ Service Providers, HPC and Enterprise/ Public end-users. This investment with Schneider Electric will help Green Mountain to meet customer demands both now and in the future.

A new data centre strategy from the Norwegian government has provided a clear sign that international companies are to be supported by a compelling business case including both low-cost renewable power and a proactive, forward-thinking regulator. Combined with low operational costs, high quality and a rapid speed to market model through modular builds, this new strategy has encouraged companies to take action to colocate their data centres in Norway with Green Mountain.

Schneider Electric has a strong track record helping to drive innovation in critical buildings from hospitals and airports to manufacturing sites and data centres. While being able to harness the benefits of abundant free cooling availability and renewable hydro-power, Green Mountain has also been able to increase the efficiency of its infrastructure and reduce risk in its data centres by utilising Schneider Electric solutions throughout the original build and subsequent upgrades.

Charlie Timmermann concluded, “A project of this scale proves what can be achieved when two pioneering organizations work together to ensure quality and environmental standards can be met without compromising uptime.”