Permitting the holy grail of data centers: reliability meets emissions, leading UPS data center to SCR emissions control

To say that United Parcel Service relies heavily on data is as obvious as saying people need blood. Data is the lifeblood of UPS' global package delivery network. Exactly where a package is, and when it will be delivered, all monitored in "real time" is vital to UPS' operations.

At any given time there are about 45 million packages in the system, more during the holidays. About 14 million parcels daily are put in motion with their every move recorded, tracked and analyzed.

As a result, UPS takes data very, very seriously. This is immediately obvious at UPS' Windward data center in Alpharetta, Ga., a facility one computer manufacturer called the "holy grail of data centers." Windward, opened in 1995, is one of two UPS data centers, along a facility with in Mahwah, NJ., built in 1989 and expanded to a Tier IV data center in 1995.

How serious the Windward operation protects its data is seen in the fact that it was the first Tier IV data center as classified by the Uptime Institute (see accompanying article). According to the Uptime Institute, Windward was the first site to assume the availability of dual-powered computer equipmen As a result, the facility has achieved "five nines" of reliability over its nine year history, with a goal of "six nines" a mark the operations has achieved "from time to time." Five nines is 99.999% reliability, essentially meaning only one out of several hundred computer servers can be offline less than 30 seconds annually.

In developing the dual-powered computer hardware necessary to achieve Tier IV reliability, UPS worked with most of the major computer manufacturers.

According to Joe Parrino, Windward facilities engineering manager, one computer manufacturer, who was surveying data centers throughout North America, visited the Windward operations and said, "what you're building here is the holy grail of data centers."

"He later told us that we are performing reliability-related tasks that other people didn't even have awareness of," Parrino said.

In 1995, to back up Windward's extensive computer operations, UPS installed six, 1.6 MW Caterpillar 3516B diesel generator sets with Kato generators engineered and packaged by Yancey Power Systems, Austell, Ga. The sets are located in a pair of engine rooms, the A side and B side. The gen-sets were designed to be used both for backup and peak shaving operations.

Again, underscoring how serious UPS and Windward are about reliability is the fact that there is 9.6 MW of installed power at a facility with a 2 MW load. And, the plant is built to house an additional six similarly sized sets for a possible total of nearly 20 MW on-site.

Parrino said Windward uses the generator sets during a total loss of utility power, during brownouts/voltage swells or grid instabilities, during power switching activities from other users on the nearby grid, during maintenance or troubleshooting by Georgia Power, as well as peak shaving when the cost of electricity exceeds 7 cents/kWh.