13 June 2023
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A newly built Airedale by Modine chiller being prepared for customer delivery
A 5MW testing laboratory has been commissioned at the Modine Rockbridge facility in Virginia, USA, expanding the services that Airedale by Modine can offer data centre customers.
The new lab can test a complete range of air conditioning equipment, accommodating air-cooled chillers up to 2.1MW and water-cooled chillers up to 5MW. Crucially for data centre applications, the ambient temperature inside the chamber can be reduced to prove chiller free cooling performance. Free cooling is the process of using external ambient temperature to reject heat, rather than using the refrigeration process. If used within an optimised system, it can help a data centre significantly reduce its energy consumption and carbon footprint.
In addition, the first US-based service team has been launched, to provide ongoing support to data centre customers in the field. The Rockbridge facility is also working with colleges in Northern Virginia to recruit and train service engineers, either as new graduates who will receive fast-tracked training or through apprenticeships.
These investments coincide with deliveries of the first Airedale chillers and fan walls to key customer Corscale. A total of 28 OptiChill Free Cool chillers and 64 fan walls have so far been transported from Modine’s Rockbridge and Grenada, Mississippi, facilities to Corscale’s 130-acre Gainesville Crossing Data Campus in Northern Virginia, with further deliveries planned, to complete the order announced last year. Once complete, the chillers will provide cooling to 8 x 9MW data halls in what is eventually planned to be a 300MW development. Corscale selected the chillers due to their market-leading free cooling performance.
