Greentech Lead America: Symmes Maini & McKee Associates’ (SMMA) announced its design for the EMC Durham Center of Excellence data center, Phases I and II, in Durham, NC has received LEED Commercial Interiors (CI) Gold Certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).
SMMA’s concept and design of the facility achieves multiple advantages for the owner, including qualifying for $660,000 in power company rebates and reduction of EMC’s overall carbon footprint by 100 million pounds of CO₂.
There were three main sources for LEED points at the EMC facility: Energy savings, water use reduction and sustainable materials and resources, including building reuse.
Several existing building components were repurposed as part of the project: New materials contained up to 85 percent recycled content; more than 20 percent of the materials used were locally sourced; and 95 percent of construction waste was diverted from landfills and incineration facilities and recycled back into the manufacturing process.
Each design decision for the facility was made to achieve an optimum Power Use Effectiveness (PUE). (PUE is a measure of how efficiently a computer data center uses its power; PUE is the ratio of total amount of power used by a facility to the power delivered to computing equipment.) The Center of Excellence is currently running at 1.26 PUE.
Overall the facility is generating energy savings of more than 34 percent. SMMA designers focused on ways to cool the space that went beyond reliance on energy-hungry air conditioning equipment. Energy-efficient cooling measures include cold-aisle containment, and high-efficiency humidification, a non-fossil-fuel based high-pressure reverse osmosis system.
Even with the warm climate of North Carolina, through innovative HVAC design the EMC Center of Excellence provides over 5,500 hours (approximately 62.8 percent) of free cooling per year. The qualification for $660,000 in energy rebates is based on the power company’s desire to optimize the electricity delivered commensurate with its available infrastructure.
The design team also achieved dynamic and uniform airflow throughout the space. Design components, such as large vertical and horizontal plenums, function as extensions of the mechanical system and provide unobstructed airflow paths serving the whitespace.
The facility also includes high performance floor supply grills, perforated plates to uniformly distribute airflow, minimized differential pressure between under floor and data center and custom Air Handling Units (AHUs) utilizing a multiple fan array approach, thereby reducing connected motor horsepower.
Water use reduction was another major source of points for the LEED certification. One inch of rain on the 450,000 square-foot roof results in 280,000 gallons of potential water reuse. Mindful of this, the team proposed and implemented a system that captures, stores and reuses this water. The end result is a reduction in the use of potable water by 78 percent. This total is comprised of a 40 percent decrease owing to the rainwater collection system and an additional 38 percent decrease through use of low-water flow toilets, waterless urinals and no permanent irrigation system.