Business
All photos by Trafo Power Solutions
The volume of equipment in large data centre server rooms creates considerable heat and this requires extensive cooling facilities leading to high levels of energy demand .
DRY-TYPE TRANSFORMERS PROVE WORTH IN BOOMING DATA CENTRES
With the data centre business thriving in South Africa , there has been a growing need for safe and reliable transformers to serve this ‘ no downtime ’ application . David Claassen , managing director of Trafo Power Solutions , explains why dry-type transformers are regularly selected for these demanding environments .
The growth of data centres in South Africa has been rapid in recent years , with exacting requirements related to safety and reliability being placed on all relevant equipment . This has created special opportunities for the application of dry-type transformers .
According to Claassen , there is a significant amount of data space currently being constructed in South Africa . Alongside the issue of data security , says Claassen , the top priority in these facilities is uptime – as a data centre can simply never be offline .
“ The volume of equipment in these large server rooms creates considerable heat and therefore requires extensive cooling facilities – all leading to high levels of energy demand ,” says Claassen . “ Transformers therefore play an important role in these operations , and they must function to the highest levels of safety and reliability .”
He notes that South Africa faces a significant additional challenge , with unreliable electricity supply from the national utility . This requires backup power facilities to be installed , so that 100 % uptime can be guaranteed .
“ Even aside from the power supply issues , data centres must deliver a constant service without interruption , so redundancy capacity is required should any of the system components go down ,” he says . “ This redundancy can effectively double the design capacity of these centres .”
In these applications , dry-type transformers are well suited in terms of safety and risk , he explains . As the units are cooled by
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RACA Journal I May 2023 www . refrigerationandaircon . co . za