Finning supplies emergency power to Ark Data Centres & JCA Group for Tier 3 data centre

Finning won the contract to supply emergency, standby diesel generator sets for phase two of Ark’s development at their Wiltshire data centre campus, Spring Park, which, as a project, was completed on time and within budget.

The contract, awarded by principal contractor, the JCA Group, included the supply, installation and commissioning of two Caterpillar C18 700 kVA generators together with two bunded-slab fuel tanks, full control system and integrated systems’ testing.

Data Centre P1, at Spring Park, is a low-carbon facility that uses a range of energy-efficient technologies, such as fresh air-cooling, to meet stringent environmental targets. Equally important is the data centre infrastructure and availability, to deliver the Tier 3 design resilience, which includes the site having power availability of at least 99.982%.

All Ark locations ensure the flexibility and scalability needed to build an environment that will exceed customer needs and expectations. A Tier 3 principled design is deployed across all Ark data centres, providing concurrently maintainable systems to service all business critical infrastructures.

Power system redundancy is therefore critical to ensure that the load is always fully supported. The Finning generator solution is configured in an N+1 arrangement, where, in the event of mains failure, both units will start up and share the load.

Installation space is at a premium, so each generator enclosure is mounted on top of its own fuel tank, providing a combined 72 hours of capacity at full load. Each tank is supplied via a dedicated external fill point, also provided by Finning.

Commenting on the reasons for selecting the Finning system, Tim Edwins, Contracts Director at JCA Group said, “Reliability coupled with low cost of ownership is critical in any data centre. Caterpillar power solutions have proven their robustness in data centres across the world and as Cat’s sole dealer in the UK, we were able to call upon Finning’s experience to provide the mission critical power for Ark’s latest site expansion.”

Pip Squire, Design and Build Director at Ark said, “Ark has been working with JCA since 2009 on various projects across our data centre campuses. We select our partners and sub- contractors on the basis that they provide the same levels of excellence and commitment to our customers. The generators are an integral element of our data centre’s availability and JCA selected Finning and Caterpillar to reflect the Ark standards.”