OVERVIEW

Developing a Sustainable Critical Infrastructure for Telecommunications

UScellular (USC) is a growing cellular company who needed to upgrade their critical infrastructure to not only be more reliable, but also more sustainable. They teamed up with MDI Access (MDI), their longstanding partner, to research and help develop the greenest and most energy-efficient plan for their data centers.

 

This involved a series of approvals, not only from the Critical Assessment Board but also their local utility company, Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) who would potentially provide financial incentives to companies who are implementing energy efficiency in their operational practices.

 

CHALLENGE

Achieving Sustainability & Data Center Energy Consumption Goals without Compromising Uptime

USC needed a critical power upgrade for their data centers. Aging Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) were becoming less reliable and required constant maintenance visits. Simultaneously, USC was trying to implement more energy-efficient UPS systems to decrease data center energy consumption and transition to a more sustainable critical infrastructure.

 

This new initiative would require a long process of research, approvals, and implementation, so USC turned to their longtime partner, MDI, to start the process. As they worked together, Mike Popovic (USC) and Bob Matthews (MDI) developed a plan to make USC’s facilities as green as possible.

 

Implementing a new critical infrastructure would also be a labor-intensive process that would have to be carried out very meticulously.

 

According to Mike Popovic, USC’s Data Center Manager, “If anything went down in the production data center, it could take months to correct the fault with the system.”

 

SOLUTION

Meticulous Planning & Energy-Efficient UPS Systems

Knowing that there was incentive money from ComEd to install energy-efficient critical infrastructure, the team worked with Franklin Energy, ComEd’s incentive partner for pre-approval of the project. According to the rules of ComEd, what USC decided to choose for their business needed to be approved as the best solution available.

 

Once the new equipment is approved, they then put money towards the project. MDI worked with the Franklin Group to prepare all the required documentation and calculations required by ComEd. Upon reviewing all the data, capital expenses, and operating costs, they found that payoff for the project was just over 2 years.

 

Reliability and energy efficiency were top factors that convinced them to go with Mitsubishi Electric’s high efficiency UPS: The SUMMIT Series® UPSs.

 

In addition to being an energy-efficient UPS, the SUMMITs run cooler and quieter in comparison to the previous legacy UPSs the facility had used. Since USC opted for the highest efficiency UPS on the market, ComEd committed over $300k to the project.

 

As the project began to take form, the outlined method of replacing the 4 systems would take 12 weeks, doing one UPS at a time, following USC’s rules for work on critical infrastructure.

 

“There were only certain times you could do a wraparound maintenance bypass, and to do this kind of work was usually Saturday night going into Sunday morning- 11:45 pm and done by 6 am. Each unit would have to be taken offline during a scheduled window. Then replaced and started up during the next scheduled window,” Matthews explains.

 

Matthews and Popovic sat down and determined that there would be over 24 transfers to and from bypass if they followed the initial plan of just switching out one UPS at a time. They determined that this plan was unacceptable due to risk of human error and the fact that they couldn’t affect the production load - critical to USC’s operations.

 

To shorten the installation timeline and reduce risk, they determined the best course of action would be to bring the generators online, take the A side offline, then install and commission the new equipment. This was then repeated on the B side to complete the replacement and reduced the number of transfers down to 4.

 

Even though USC has an N+1 generator plant as standard, a third roll up generator was brought onsite to further reduce any risk. Full product maintenance was performed on the generator sets, belt replacements were done, and additional work to ensure that there would be no interruptions during the installation.

 

Taking the load down was just not an option, so installation had to be coordinated and carried out incredibly meticulously.

RESULTS

Decreased Data Center Energy Consumption for Significant Cost Savings

Popovic explains how switching to Mitsubishi Electric SUMMIT UPSs has reduced the company’s overall utility costs by lowering their data center energy consumption and increasing their efficiency from 75-78% all the way to 97.9-98%.

Additionally, USC’s installation process was significantly shortened from an originally quoted 12-week project to a 4-week one, saving USC approximately $40k, as well as limiting the possibility of human error. ComEd wrote a check to USC for over $300k in rebates for this project.

 

Other projects within the 48,000 square foot facility that encompasses the data center and labs have received over $800k for all their green initiatives. USC credits MDI with helping them achieve such remarkable milestones throughout their partnership.