The Belgian ICT company Cegeka today started using its new and expanded data centre in Hasselt. The expanded data centre now has a capacity of 700 kilowatts or over 70% more than previously. Cegeka invested 2.4 million euros in extending the building, an emergency power supply and cooling infrastructure. It is the first company in Belgium to install two heat wheels from KyotoCooling. The investment is particularly aimed at helping the continued growth of Cegeka Outsourcing.

The cooling system from KyotoCooling allows the temperature in the data centre to be reduced in an energy-efficient way, aided by the cooler outside air. Only when this is higher than 20 °C does the standard cooling system start operating. “Our new cooling system is more environmentally friendly as well as cheaper. After all, in Belgium the outside temperature is below twenty degrees for over 90% of the time,” says Luc Greefs, Business Unit Manager Data Centres at Cegeka

Cooling is the main point of interest in data centres, since servers convert 95% of the energy into heat. If the ambient temperature becomes too high, they break down. The KyotoCooling heat wheels of Cegeka extract the warm air from the computer room and simultaneously bring in cold air from outside. They cool the warm air and pump it back into the server room. The air circuits of the heat exchanger are separated, so no pollution or smells enter the computer room. The heat wheels have a diameter of three metres.

Thanks to the new, dual emergency power supply and dual cooling systems, Cegeka’s data centre in Hasselt comes under the Tier 3 category. The tier system classifies data centres according to availability percentages. Tier 3 data centres are characterised by redundant distribution and provision of power supply and cooling and they have an availability of at least 99.982%.
Additionally, Cegeka has data centres in Leuven and Veenendaal in the Netherlands. The Belgian data centres are fully mirrored.

Solar panels ensure green power generation
In September Cegeka also installed a total of 612 solar panels on the roofs of its buildings, equivalent to an average annual yield of 95,000 KWh.
In May last year Cegeka also opened its new low-energy passive office building. Cegeka is using concrete core activation instead of a standard heating or cooling system. It is a technique that makes use of the heat accumulation capacity of concrete. The pipes were cast in concrete, which means that Cegeka heats and cools it office building with water at a very low temperature: 19 °C to cool and 26 °to heat. With a standard heating system this is 60 °C.