EDGE CENTRES
people are paying more for priority . What used to be about a $ 2,000 price tag to get a container from the US or China to Australia is , as of this morning , $ 6,600 - we ' re more than three times the pre-pandemic shipping cost of a shipping container . Then , in Melbourne , I ' ve also got three containers waiting on the dock to be X-Rayed , and they ' ve been there since the sixth of June , three weeks ago .”
As a result , the Grafton site is pulled together from locally available modified components .
Normally , when you power a data centre , you run your electricity from your centralised power source to a mechanical and electrical board to be distributed where it ’ s needed . “ What we ' ve done with the air conditioners is split the power , so we have AC and DC units . So , because we ' re using purely DC from solar , we tap into that and run both the fans and electronics directly from the DC without inverters . We only use AC to run the compressor as and when required , so it ' s a lot more efficient ,” Eaves explains . “ Then , on the electrical side for the IT load , rather than having a centralised UPS , we run the power straight to a board , which means that each customer has its own dedicated UPS — which are made specially for us and procured by Stulz .”
Edge Centres builds its facilities inside non-standardised containers , which allow for extra space and hot-aisle / coldaisle containment . Power is housed in a separate container on site , with two power packs per site - an A and a B feed that are completely separated from the data centre itself . Those individual units carry the batteries , the inverters , and the main board . Each inverter ( of which there are five pairs ) has its own bank of solar panels in place of a utility power connection . The pairs can be reconfigured on the fly allowing
28 October 2021