Vertiv Unveils Customer Experience Center and Data Center Microgrid Installation at Delaware
Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital
infrastructure and continuity solutions, announced the grand opening of its Vertiv
Customer Experience Center, featuring a microgrid power solution to
help data centers address electrical grid capacity and availability challenges.
Data centers are experiencing these challenges as advancements in digital
transformation, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI
(GenAI), are straining traditional electrical utilities. Vertiv partnered with
American Electric Power (AEP) on the microgrid application. The microgrid and
experience center are now active at the Vertiv Delaware facility.
Microgrids for data centers have
become increasingly popular as trends such as artificial intelligence (AI)
require more power than is available from traditional electric grids.
Additionally, microgrids can be used to reduce reliance on the electrical grid
for power capacity and availability, and to reduce diesel generator backup
starts.
Vertiv will be leveraging the
application as proof of concept to test operational functions of the microgrid
and Vertiv data center infrastructure technologies, including reliability,
backup duration, and the responsiveness of the microgrid during a variety of
normal and extreme operating conditions.The Vertiv microgrid merges
best-in-class, reliable, and eco-friendly infrastructure technologies to
support data center availability and sustainability objectives.
“Our customers are evaluating the
role of microgrids and battery energy storage systems (BESS) for their mission
critical power systems. Standing up a microgrid that serves as both a customer
experience center and a test lab for performance will enable Vertiv to help our
customers make critical decisions on whether a microgrid and BESS are right for
their data center and how to deploy their own microgrid sites,” said Kyle
Keeper, senior vice president, Global AC Power product development and
engineering at Vertiv. “This is an important step in helping our customers
operate more efficiently and effectively with the electrical grid.”
The 1.0 megawatt (MW) microgrid
includes a 1.0 MW AC Solar PV (photovoltaic) array, 400MW Hydrogen Fuel Cell,
1.0 MW Vertiv DynaFlex Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), and Vertiv’s
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system, lithium-ion battery, system
controls, and other critical components.
Microgrids reduce vulnerability to
utility outages by using a number of connected distributed energy resources,
with a BESS storing the energy and providing it on demand as needed. In the
Vertiv application, energy sources are coming from the electrical utility, the
solar array and the hydrogen fuel cell.
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