On-Site Power

Rolls-Royce gen-sets to power Madrid data center during outages

Rolls-Royce gen-sets to power Madrid data center during outages
(Photo courtesy Rolls Royce )

Power Engineering International

Rolls-Royce has installed and commissioned eight mtu emergency gensets with 9.2MWe power output at a major bank in the vicinity of Madrid. The gensets will secure power supply to the bank’s data center should the public power grid fail.

The overall solution consists of two types of mtu-brand diesel generator sets: four mtu 12-cylinder 4000 DS1650 units, each with 1,425MWe power output, and four 16-cylinder mtu 2000 DS1100 units, each with 880 MWe power output. 

The emergency generator sets were built at Rolls-Royce’s assembly facility in Ruhstorf, Germany, and then placed in 20 and 40-ft containers at PSH Energia, a Spanish partner of Rolls-Royce.

Before the turnkey systems were handed over to the customer, they were successfully put through their paces in the usual factory acceptance tests, and in further tests designed to prove that the power node requirements specific to the project were being met.

Rolls-Royce will also provide provide services to ensure the reliable operation of the gensets as part of a 12-year preventive and corrective maintenance agreement signed with the bank. The data center was recently certified according to the Tier-3 standard of the Uptime Institute. By means of redundant and double-fed servers, data storage systems, network connections and other IT components, the data center will offer the bank a very high level of operational reliability.

It is becoming increasingly important to ensure reliable power supply in the event of both planned and unplanned power outages resulting from incidents such as harsh weather or spikes in energy demand.

Another example is Space, an Indonesian-based data center operator that commissioned some three gas and diesel gensets from the company.

Darren Hawkins, CEO of Space, said: “There is growing demand for local data centres in Southeast Asia, even more since the Covid-19 crisis. With the trend of decarbonisation, new concepts of power supply for data centres are at the forefront.”