Recently went through a detailed review of the design of Telehouse
Docklands. The UPS service is in fact based on house high-voltage DC.
Inverters or converters are installed to meet customer requirements of
voltage, frequency, etc. Batteries can carry the original full load
for something like 18 hours, giving ample time to fix the generators
(grin).
The site was originally christened by some Japanese banks who wanted
disaster recover for a building full of 3090s, which use 415 Hz power,
btw. The mainframe biz didn't make it, so Telehouse started looking
around for folks who wanted really killer facilities.
They are *extremely* impressive. (better than some Mil-spec places!)
The power system has 3 generators available at all times, only two of
which are required to carry the original rated load (which was huge by
current standards). There is space for a 4th if required. The
building has 3 disjoint cooling loops with redundant pumps. The house
power risers are huge floating buss-bars in 2 disjoint risers, each
carries 2 independent rails ("A and B").
The building is Faraday-shielded because that far down the Thames, the
ships go to full power on their radars and there are interesting EMI
problems if you don't take care. The exterior glass, which is largely
ornimental, is mylar-blast-coated. The recent Docklands bombing was
right down the street and "nothing happened".
The building AC is fed from 3 distinct locations on the power grid
through disjoint entrances, and there are 4 entrances for fiber into
the building, all going different directions.
There is continuous video surveillance available for spaces, and there
is a generator engineer on-site 24x365 (big problem if the generator
doesn't start!). They have a run-tank rated for at least a week at
full load. Self-contained drinking water and other needs for
self-contained full support of the onsite staff.
This is a very, very impresive building!!!
Interestingly, if you build it like this ab initio, it is cheaper than
doing much less after the fact by a LOT.
-Mike O'Dell
