Control your HVAC motors anywhere!

Global Building Controls is a leading British provider of building management systems. With extensive expertise in motor control, inverter drives and PLC systems, the Gloucestershire-based company specialises in HVAC projects, but also has wide experience in diverse industry sectors.

Global Building Controls was asked to develop optimised data centre HVAC solutions for Gratte Brothers Group, one of the UK’s leading independent building services companies and for JCA, a building engineering and technology services company, specialising in engineering, maintenance, electrical and technology solutions for business.

The VSD solutions supplied by Global Building Controls would be installed in multiple new data centres provisioned by Gratte and JCA. Primary requirements were that the VSDs should be suitable for use outdoors without needing further protection, that they should offer high efficiency and reliability, and that they should have excellent harmonic characteristics.

“Although the fans in these applications operate at fixed speeds, equipping them with variable speed drives was a big benefit as it allows us to set the best speed for each fan individually during commissioning”, explained Simon Britton, Director at Global Building Controls.

“This meant that we could achieve substantial energy savings while optimising the climatic performance of the HVAC installation. The VACON 100X drives have proved very satisfactory and we have now used them on 25 data centre sites with two to four fans each.”

Global Building Controls found that VACON’s 100X drives were an ideal choice for this project. With a power range up to 37 kW, which is unmatched by ostensibly similar competitive products, VACON 100 X drives feature a rugged die-cast metal enclosure with an IP66 ingress protection rating. They also have an exceptionally wide operating temperature range of -40 ºC to +60 ºC, allowing them to perform reliably and consistently outdoors, even in the toughest of operating conditions.

A breathable pressure equaliser vent protects the enclosure seal and the drives feature a heatsink cooling system that isn’t dependent on motor airflow. In addition, VACON 100X drives have built-in harmonic filtering chokes and EMC filters for EN61800-3 category C2 applications as standard. Another key feature of these drives is that they use the latest film capacitor technology to ensure long working life and to minimise environmental impact.

Mr. Britton also said: “In our line of work we get to see first-hand the abilities of drive products from various manufacturers and sometimes we have less than positive experiences. But based on our excellent 15-year relationship with VACON and the high quality of their products, the 100X was the obvious choice. There were no problems during the project, which enabled us to deliver the finalised solution ahead of time”.

“And, as an added benefit, the drives were easy to set up and to interface, on top of offering energy savings and reliability. So it goes without saying that we will most certainly be using VACON products in future projects,” he concluded.

In enterprise data centres, effectively controlling heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems is a crucial factor in ensuring efficient, dependable operation of equipment and security of data. With fans working continuously at full speed, however, electricity bills can spiral out of control and, to guard against this, motor speeds need to be optimised with VSDs.