Siemens delivers AI-based white space cooling solution for Tier IV data centre

White Space Cooling Optimization for highly efficient greenfield data center in Paris region.

Friday, 4th December 2020 Posted 4 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Siemens Smart Infrastructure is supplying the first Tier IV-certified data center in the region of Paris, France. The “Thésée” data center will meet the highest industry standards for availability and energy efficiency. Siemens will install its White Space Cooling Optimization (WSCO) smart solution to optimize the building’s energy efficiency as well as the thermal protection of the server rooms by automatically adjusting the operation of the cooling systems.

Located in Aubergenville in the Paris region, the Thésée data center will occupy a 1000 m² computer room building. The project is funded by French banking institute Caisse des Dépôts and real estate group Idec, with operations scheduled to start in the spring of 2021. In the long term, five more buildings will be added to the project. Siemens was chosen to install the cooling solution to increase the building’s energy efficiency, primarily by automatically adjusting the computer rooms’ cooling systems around the clock. The WSCO solution meets the particularly high cooling demands of the data center, leveraging artificial intelligence to optimize performance. When it comes to sustainability, Thésée aims to achieve a PUE (power usage effectiveness) coefficient of 1.2.

“We opted for the Siemens solution because it ensures a high level of security and reduces energy consumption and maintenance needs. In the long term, this will also extend the life span of the equipment,” said Eric Arbaretaz, CTO of the Thésée data center.

High-performance white space cooling

The Thésée campus will be the Paris region’s first independent co-location data center and the first to adhere to the Tier IV certification by the Uptime Institute. Tier IV stands for the highest certification level, guaranteeing a “fault tolerant” site and an availability of 99.995%. Currently, there are less than thirty Tier IV data centers in Europe. Operating the cooling equipment accounts for up to 30% of a data center’s energy consumption. The Siemens solution leverages artificial intelligence to strictly limit energy demand to what is necessary, thus generating major financial, operational and energy savings. For data centers, the tolerance threshold for the temperature in computer rooms is a vital parameter to be adhered to. The WSCO solution from Siemens will respond automatically to any unexpected event, quickly solving temperature problems or failures and minimizing the risks of malfunctioning. In addition, artificial intelligence enables a rapid response to mitigate any overconsumption or issues linked to the infrastructure's operation, ensuring the equipment’s availability without any interruption.