DCI
Redefining sustainability As computational power demands rise, DCI’ s engineering framework balances heavy load requirements with strict environmental targets – focusing on water, operational energy and embodied carbon.
“ At DCI, we recognise the role we play in the community and sustainability sits in the centre of how we design things,” Hatem notes.“ We have a clear and ambitious sustainability framework which we adopt in all our developments.” Water conservation forms the first pillar of this strategy.
“ Water is one of the main objectives we are focusing on, our standard design is essentially based on nowater use,” Hatem outlines.“ We adopt highly efficient closed-loop cooling solutions. The water circulates in a sealed loop and gets reused continuously, so the facility draws almost nothing from the mains supply. It also means water restrictions or supply issues don’ t affect how we operate.”
When evaluating energy consumption, Hatem cautions against relying solely on peak-performance metrics like design Power Usage Effectiveness( PUE).
“ PUE at design point tells you very little,” he stresses.“ A design PUE doesn’ t tell the full story, facilities spend most of their life at part load, not at peak loads, and that’ s where efficiency is either won or lost. It’ s highly unlikely that you find a data centre operating at 100 % of its load for a long period of time. I haven’ t seen it.”
Instead, DCI models energy usage dynamically across the entire year.
“ WHATEVER WE DESIGN NOW, WE PROBABLY CAN’ T LOOK IT UP”
Hatem Attia Director of Engineering DCI Data Centers
“ We design for optimised performance across the operating range, throughout the year, not a single design point,” Hatem explains.“ We spend a lot of time on energy modelling to understand the annual performance of the facility and how we can fine-tune the system to minimise wasted energy for every kilowatt of IT load.”
The final pillar – carbon reduction – remains an industry-wide challenge, particularly across complex supply chains.
“ We are conscious of the importance of reducing our carbon footprint and adopting technologies and methodologies that help us do so,” Hatem says.“ We work closely with our partners on identifying these opportunities
18 dcidatacenters. com