Design engineering firms have the important task of designing robust yet energy-efficient building systems for data centers and other mission-critical buildings. As part of this process, they need to specify requirements for instrumentation and monitoring of HVAC systems. A little choice - a sensor - can have a huge impact on reliability of the control loop and efficiency of the whole building. This article explains why Vaisala temperature and humidity sensors are the ideal monitoring solution for data centers.

The challenge

Data centers are absolutely critical to keep the modern world functioning, which is why they have high uptime requirements – in many facilities, even up to 99.999% uptime is expected. This means annual downtime of only a few minutes.

Keeping a data center up and running requires ensuring proper cooling and humidity control. But at the same time, there is pressure to cut costs and energy consumption as data centers represent more than 1% of global energy consumption. Accurate measurements of temperature and humidity are needed to ensure optimal cooling – and since cooling may represent even up to 40% of a data center’s energy use, optimizing this can lead to significant cost savings.

When it comes to designing a new data center, many companies outsource the process to design engineering firms. As part of the process, design engineering firms have to specify what temperature and humidity sensors to use to monitor and control HVAC systems. Selecting the correct instrument for each application and the correct installation location is a key challenge for design firms.

The solution

One of the most important requirements to reduce cooling costs is to measure the conditions properly in the first place. A data center’s temperature control strategy is only as good as the measurement equipment, and even small measurement errors can increase a data center’s energy bill significantly.

In addition to indoor sensors for temperature and humidity measurement, energy consumption can be also optimized by taking local climatic changes into account, which requires outdoor weather sensors. All instruments also need periodic checking. That’s why it’s good to choose instruments that have minimal long-term drifting and are easy to maintain.

Vaisala has been supplying and developing measurement instruments for data centers for more than 15 years. Vaisala has supplied tens of thousands of instruments to hundreds of data centers around the world and has the experience to aid in the selection of the instrument that best fits an application requirement as well as the best installation location.

The benefits

Using Vaisala instruments for indoor and outdoor measurement in your data center design offers the following benefits:

Smart and accurate HVAC sensors for a wide range of needs

Vaisala offers a range of sensors designed to improve the HVAC process measurements. You can choose from a wide selection of transmitters, interchangeable probes, and software.

Easy maintenance 

Contractors may not think about the long-term cost and maintenance of a design, but engineering design firms can, which is the key for adding value. Vaisala sensors can be easily checked where they are installed to ensure accuracy, and many offer interchangeable probes that can be swapped out – allowing the old probe to be calibrated at a lab while the newly exchanged probe ensures the continued high accuracy of your sensors.

End customer satisfaction 

High-quality sensors with low drift and easy maintenance ensure the accurate measurement of temperature and humidity at data centers, helping to optimize cooling. This helps to ensure maximum uptime and minimizes energy costs at the data center.

Do you want to learn how Vaisala can help your data center to perform better? Drop us a line and we will get back to you.