Hanley Energy recently teamed up with partner ABB to release a new market-leading UPS product. Confidence is high that this will usher in a new class-leading pre-packaged power line-up solution to the market.

The Hanley Energy solution favours skid-mounted equipment as a means to address a number of recurring issues, from local skill shortages to speed of installation and ease of commissioning.

According to engineering manager Alan Smyth: “There are huge advantages of bringing anything upstream. If you can bring manufacturing and assembly into the factory, you have tighter control of quality and procedures.”

Lower risk, 100% up time

The plug and play modular solution provided by Hanley Energy creates less of a disconnect between design and construction teams, since time on site for installation is minimised.

Rather than assembling individual components on site against ever-shorter deadlines, the power line-up can be delivered and deployed in a fraction of the time. As a result, both parties save time, reduce cost and de-risk through less time on site. And the customer gets 100% uptime they rely on with a fraction of the risk.

Given the benefits the solution provides, it’s surprising that more providers do not offer it. But, as Smyth explained, the simplicity is in the deployment, not the project management: “Hanley Energy are uniquely placed with the OEM partners because of the skills and experience we have,” he said. “That also means we can offer a bespoke solution without the price penalty.”

Fast deployment of a tailored solution

That ability to take a modular product and customise it offers a clear advantage. “You’re not starting with a blank sheet of paper every time. We’re taking a concept and giving it the customer tweaks," said Smyth.

"You can pick it up and move it. If you’re looking at 10s of units that are really similar, we can be flexible and tailor the exact specification of the switchgear and the UPS.”

Not that this approach is necessarily new, points out MD and co-founder Dennis Nordon: “Modular has been used in the oil and gas industry as well as mining for years. 

"In fact, it was the standard approach for many of the original data centre sites in Dublin itself. But originally, there was this notion that modular was more expensive." And that was before the dotcom bubble burst!

The push for faster deployment

Nowadays, Nordon likens the data centre industry’s strategy to the pioneering land grabs of North American in the 1850s. “This is a game of real estate,” he said. “Whoever gets the real estate gets the control. So the priority is faster deployment in order to sign up customers.”

Modular delivers that speed and control, he observes. It is not only the approach now taken by tech giants such as Microsoft and Google, but also the driving force behind market growth expected to touch 10 to 15% in the coming years.

New ways of deploying UPS

The modular UPS unit provided by Hanley Energy can be built in 250kw power blocks. According to Nordon: “That means day one you can have the capacity available to you but if you haven’t got the clients you can just put in one power module. You’re only consuming what you need.”

Not surprisingly, this is an especially attractive solution for co-location data centre facilities leasing to some of the bigger players, as well as the next tier down – those with clients operating five or 10 racks. “That’s the sort of market where modular will really grow,” he predicted.

For more information, visit www.hanleyenergy.com/harnessing-the-advantages-of-modular/

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