Boost for Shanghai data centre to help keep China’s billion+ internet users connected

With over one billion internet users, China is the world’s number one user of the web with an ever-increasing appetite for data. To keep pace, the data center industry in China has been growing rapidly, and reliability is the top priority for operators including those behind the Shanghai Yueke Data Center which has just had a medium- and low-voltage power distribution solution installed by ABB to keep the data flowing 24/7.

Located in the Shanghai Yueke Big Data Industrial Park, the 70,000m2 data center has 8,000 electrification cabinets making it one of the biggest in the city. The Yueke Data Center provides digital services and complex computing work to large, high-profile customers including Tencent– which is the creator of the WeChat social media and messaging platform – and China Telecom, the seventh biggest telecoms provider in the world.

To ensure the facility can keep the data flowing between its clients and their millions of users, Yueke Data Center has been designed to meet China’s A-level data center design standards. It has also achieved the ISO 9000 quality mark.

With so many online users, reliability and stability is a major concern for China’s data centers. The Yueke Data Center has been awarded Tier 3 certification from the Uptime Institute for its maintenance and operations, but to further boost its credentials and ensure availability around the clock, the UniGear ZS1 switchgear ABB installed at the site has been equipped with Relion® protection and control relays. These ensure any problems in the power system can be detected as early as possible, so issues can be eliminated, or the impact can be significantly reduced.

“By adopting ABB's high-quality electrical products and solutions, the power system of Shanghai Yueke Data Center has become more secure, greener and smarter, which greatly enhanced our competitiveness and service quality,” said Wang Qi, the development and sales director of Shanghai Yueke Technology Co. Ltd.

As a large-scale data center with 11MW demand for power, keeping Yueke Data Center’s running costs low is imperative for its operators. To help reduce energy consumption and maximize efficiencies, ABB’s Emax 2 air circuit breakers were specified. Emax 2 protects electrical circuits and provides device-level power quality and load control capabilities for automatic transfer switches and generators.

To further improve efficiencies, ABB Ability™ Energy Manager was also installed to monitor power quality, operational status and energy consumption in real-time, and to boost the quality of the power to server rooms. ABB Ability also brings additional benefits for the Yueke Data Center’s operators including enhanced safety and reliability of IT equipment, optimized asset allocation, and helping the data center operate in a smarter, low-carbon way to reduce energy consumption by around 20 percent.