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Located at Grainger's headquarters, this 27,000 square-foot green field enterprise data center features 7,800 square feet of white space, a high-volume air-cooled design utilizing a 48-inch raised access floor and a parallel redundant UPS design. The mechanical and electrical systems were designed to N+1 with a Tier 3 fault tolerance. The initial phase opened with enough equipment to mirror an existing site and allow for an estimated 10 years of expansion capability. With a focus on energy efficiency, this site will operate with a Power Utilization Effectiveness (P.U.E.) of 1.2 at full capacity. This facility is the first LEED v4 Gold data center in the country.
Innovative details include a passive fuel sharing system between the generator belly tanks that allows up to 72 hours of continuous run time without refueling and carefully charting future expansion steps without interruption to live data operations. The project was completed in just over 6 months from site work to substantial completion.
Project Stories
The first LEED v4 data center
This facility received the first LEED v4 Gold certification in the world for any BD&C project and particularly for the new LEED Data Center application. Though it could have easily achieved LEED Platinum in the old v3 application, Grainger chose to raise the bar even higher by pioneering the new LEED v4 Data Center standard and still achieved LEED v4 Gold certification.
Testing new technology
We teamed up with Knaack to field test their new job site data vault storage boxes. This comes pre-packaged with a flat screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, surge protector and wiring harness. Having a mobile command center like this on-site allowed our field staff access to real-time project information, boosting productivity and efficiency. Other technology used included BIM, Trimble and WUFI.
