The task of powering data centers is no easy feat, especially when each country brings its unique infrastructure challenges. Any downtime for data centers can be incredibly costly, and this risk is continuously increasing with more industries becoming reliant on data centers.

Within this context, Delta Electronics, a leading global provider of power management solutions, identifies and tackles the unique challenges of powering data centers in emerging markets like the Philippines and more mature markets like Singapore with tailored solutions fitted to each environment.

Reliably empowering data center growth in the Philippines

Emerging markets like the Philippines fuel Southeast Asia’s data center construction market growth with companies such as Globe Telecom, the Philippine Land Transportation Office and PLDT expanding their networks in the country.

The Philippines has a population of over 100.7 million, with 41 Internet users per 100 and rising. It is also ranked #34 for data center density.

But to enable sustainable growth, data centers in the Philippines must have reliable power in a country where natural disasters and political controversies pose great risks for power suppliers.

“Power qualities in areas outside of Metropolitan Manila are not as reliable. Voltage spikes and sags as well as routine power outages are still common for some areas,” said Jimmy Wan, Country Sales Director for Delta Electronics.

Manila has a connectivity ecosystem made up of 18 colocation data centers and 23 cloud service providers, but even last year Luzon’s grid was on red alert.

“Almost the entire country will only have one grid, unlike most countries where any particular area may have two or more power supplies. This means that power ratings of three or four are not completely possible in the Philippines,” added Mr. Wan.

As an archipelago of over 7,000 islands, the rest of the Philippines also has logistical issues with deployment of power solutions and post-sale services. To overcome these challenges, Delta Electronics has service partners that cover the country to deliver services similar to the level in Metro areas.

Another challenge affecting the country is the fact that many small and medium-sized data centers are still on a baseline N deployment with no ability for redundancy. This means a component is not backed up by a duplicate in the event of failure. Medium and larger sized data centers more commonly have N+1 redundancy for UPS deployment.

Mr. Wan said: “A lot of data centers in the Philippines are still using comfort cooling systems like traditional air conditioning instead of precision cooling to maintain the climate inside their data centers.”

The lack of precision cooling in the country may be due to the Philippines typically running at 60Hz frequency, as many compressors and cooling units generally run at 50Hz.

On top of this, the Philippines also has the unique scenario of varying voltages, with 230V, 380V and 460V three-phase voltages depending on the area of the archipelago you live in. Typically, older buildings run at 230V and industrial areas run at 460V, while newer buildings have a 380 voltage.

“This poses a challenge for equipment suppliers, as the majority of demand is in 380V/3ph. Manufacturing in the other voltages are on a per order basis with longer lead times,” said Mr. Wan.

To solve this problem, Delta Electronics adapted to the rest of the market by making use of transformers for three-phase uninterruptible power supply solutions.

Mr. Wan added: “We have many manufacturing plants worldwide and in Southeast Asia, so we can supply our products on time to many markets.”

Delta Electronics has noticed that the Philippines market is adapting to not only reliable, but also efficient power usage.

Mr. Wan celebrated: “The market is understanding now that it is not only important to have continuous power and cooling, but also to do it efficiently by not wasting power.”

Energising Singapore’s land sparse, humid, mature data center market

Singapore is the third most robust data center market in the world and has the most mature market of any country in Southeast Asia, but it is still growing with new constructions from Equinix, Digital Realty, Keppel Data Centres and Facebook as well as cloud providers like AWS, Google, Microsoft and IBM.

Singapore is a great place to set up a data center with low risk of natural disasters, strong network connectivity, a stable political system and a geographically strategic location as a gateway connecting neighbouring Asian countries.

While the high heat and tropical climate in Singapore may seem like paradise for vacationers, it is less than desirable for data centers, as cooling systems have to work harder and consume more power to keep the facility at an optimum temperature.

This is not ideal since data centers already consume an extraordinary amount of power in a time when Singapore is looking to achieve energy efficiency and reduce emissions with carbon taxes and Green Data Centre Standards.

To this end, Delta Electronics endeavors to ‘remain committed to the research and development of innovative, energy-saving products, solutions and services that substantially contribute to the sustainable development of mankind’.

Mr. Wan said: “Our solutions are tailor-fitted to our environment and are designed to resolve our challenges. Our products are driven by global trends, scalability, efficiency and sustainability.”

Delta Electronics, with headquarters based in Taiwan, recently celebrated achieving a TIER III-Ready Award by Uptime Institute for their Point of Delivery data center solution, recognising its energy efficiency and power reliability.

Mr. Wan added: “To amend power quality, the market usually oversizes their equipment or makes use of other power quality equipment to amend these issues like power filters.”

In a land sparse country like Singapore where space is becoming increasingly valuable, Delta Electronic’s POD solution along with their Micro Data Center and Containerized Data Center solutions allow for small, medium and large enterprises to take advantage of efficient and future-proof solutions.

“Delta is unique as it is the only top data center vendor that has its headquarters in Asia. Most vendors are either European or American,” said Mr. Wan.

Delta Electronics also recently helped HTC-ITC, a subsidiary of Hanoi Telecom, to build a TIER III Uptime certified data center in Vietnam.

With the right power solutions, an emerging market could grow into a more mature market and compete at a global scale, ultimately providing societies with greater connectivity and efficiency that can power up local and worldwide digital economies.

> Discover Delta Electronics’ empowering solutions

By Stuart Crowley, Editor, W.Media