Downloadliste
On the Safe Side
WOLF, Mainburg, provides its professional customers with expert contacts who support them throughout the entire project phase. Geert Paelinck, Business Development Manager for data centres at WOLF, explains the unique challenges in this business area and the solutions.
For many customers, you are the point of contact for data centres. What distinguishes you?
Geert Paelinck: As Business Development Manager for data centres at WOLF, I am the international contact for partners and customers – these include medium-sized companies or institutions that want to keep their data in-house, as well as investors building large data centres to lease them either as colocation to multiple clients or as hyperscale to a single client. My role is to bridge the gap between powerful climate technology and the specific requirements of data centres.
WOLF customers value our cross-disciplinary expertise in data centre and technical climate solutions. I am involved early in the project phase, analyze the investor's needs and goals, identify technical specifics, and then propose energy-efficient and scalable climate solutions. Our goal is for WOLF systems to meet all investor objectives, including support in designing and integrating automation and sustainability strategies.
Data centres come in various sizes and climate zones. What challenges do you face?
Geert Paelinck: It is widely accepted that temperature and relative humidity must be kept within a narrow corridor even during large load fluctuations in data centres. What’s new is the speed and growth surge driven by digitalization and AI applications, which require increasingly larger server capacities. Typically, we explore three main topics with our clients at the start of a project:
The first requirement is that data centres must be scalable, which demands climate solutions with compact footprints.
The next key issue is efficiency, as a large portion of electrical energy is used to cool servers. Thus, the efficiency of cooling technologies directly impacts the economic viability of a data centre.
Security is the third major concern. Data centres must be designed for high reliability, meaning redundant systems must be in place – the simplest form being N+1. This affects space requirements, and the reliability demands of the cooling technology.
To find the right climate solution, the data centre’s layout must be clearly defined by the operator, as it is a variable factor. Before the actual project begins, only the site’s climatic conditions and, if applicable, the building geometry are fixed parameters.
How should data centres approach climate control?
Geert Paelinck: Given climate change and the exponentially growing demand for data, we should move away from solutions that consume large amounts of energy for cooling data centres. Decentralized CRAH or CRAC units, supplied by a central cooling system with chilled water or direct expansion (CRAC), have the disadvantage of requiring airflow through raised floors and/or complex piping.
From a future-oriented perspective, it makes more sense to adopt flexible solutions from the outset – ones that are easy to install and maintain, and that do not require extensive construction like raised floors. This includes WOLF’s decentralized Fan Wall solutions.
Why is it more sensible to use scalable solutions instead of centralized ones?
Geert Paelinck: Compared to centralized solutions, our experience shows that using compact Fan Wall Units with high-efficiency EC fans of the latest generation is more flexible, efficient, and cost-effective. These units are placed adjacent to or directly within the whitespace and remove server heat in pure recirculation mode.
Fan Wall solutions cleanly separate the whitespace from the climate technology. Apart from a wall opening from the technical corridor into the whitespace, no further construction is needed.
WOLF offers durable and corrosion-resistant units that deliver high cooling performance at low air velocities and are equipped with large, powerful heat exchangers. Chilled air, tempered via a central chiller, flows between the racks, warms up, and rises. It is then extracted near the ceiling, effectively preventing the Venturi effect – the formation of heat pockets. This makes the solution ideal for growth-oriented hyperscale data centres, colocations, and enterprise solutions.
Do you follow a specific WOLF approach to finding data centre solutions?
Geert Paelinck: Our greatest strength is the personal and often decades-long partnership with our customers and their planners. WOLF has been offering HVAC solutions 'Made in Germany' for over 60 years. We listen, inform, and thus find the ideal solution. Of course, we continuously develop our solutions together with our customers in our in-house Research and Development departments.
We are proud to have convinced one of the major European data centre players of our solution after a pilot project, with further projects now in planning. There was simply no challenge we couldn’t solve for this client. Naturally, other customers also benefit from our specialized data centre expertise.
More information about WOLF solutions in data centers: https://www.wolf.eu/en-de/professional/knowledge-management/air-handling/ecosystem/data-and-computer-centres