Chindata said the 360MW power supply for Chindata’s its Mountain Energy campus (pictured), which it claims to be the largest of its kind in Asia Pacific, will be supplied at almost a quarter of a million volts.
CTO Zhang Binghua said: “The successful commissioning of the 220kV substation has set a new benchmark and improved the stability and reliability of data centre power supply in China and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole.”
The previous plan had been to supply the data centre with 110kV, but by moving up to 220kV “reduces one voltage conversion, … reduces the floor area by about 60%, lowers construction costs, and improves power conversion efficiency and economic benefits,” said the company.
Zhang said: “Our team worked closely with all parties involved in the construction to ensure the project’s success, and we are immensely proud of the results.”
The 220kV substation that supplies the campus has “modular design, factory prefabrication, and patented … transformer technology [that] greatly have shortened construction time and reduced costs, making the agile delivery of substations possible”.
Zhang noted there were several “other challenges in the project”, which is built in the Datong coal-mining area of China, now aiming to cut carbon dioxide emissions over the next seven years and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
The data centre campus is built on collapsible soil known as loess, Chindata excavated the foundations “during the rainy season”, said Zhang, and construction on permafrost was during winter, “to deliver the project within six months”.
The campus “supports the demand for digital computing power in the Shanxi and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions”, said Chindata. “The campus efficiently transforms Shanxi’s energy advantages into computing power advantages, enabling the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region to integrate into China’s big data centre network.”
