A 5MW, state-of-the-art testing laboratory was recently commissioned at the Modine Rockbridge facility in Virginia, further expanding the services that Airedale by Modine can offer data center customers and meet increasing demand from the data center industry for validated, sustainable cooling solutions.
Airedale, the critical cooling specialists, is a trusted brand of Modine, a diversified global leader in innovative thermal management solutions, and provides complete cooling solutions to industries where removing heat is mission critical. Modine’s Rockbridge facility opened in 2022 to manufacture chillers to meet the growing demand from U.S. data center customers.
The new lab can test a complete range of air conditioning equipment, accommodating air-cooled chillers up to 2.1MW and water-cooled chillers up to 5MW. Crucially for data center applications, the ambient temperature inside the chamber can be reduced to prove chiller free cooling performance. Free cooling is the process of using external ambient temperature to reject heat, rather than using the refrigeration process. If used within an optimized system, free cooling can help a data center significantly reduce its energy consumption and carbon footprint. The lab also can facilitate quality witness tests for customers to validate chiller performance in person.
