Project Background

CEG was awarded a design-build ESPC project at NASA JPL to construct several high-efficiency data centers supporting the Laboratory’s mission-critical space flight operations. Developing this project required us to work collaboratively with multiple client stakeholders (including the JPL Office of the Chief Information Officer) to identify their computing requirements, workshop a technical basis of design, and coordinate IT migration and consolidation activities that accompanied the ESPC.

Solution

Our solution will ultimately accommodate more than 50 data center end-users and encompass two separate facilities with varying levels of resiliency, as described below.

• B230 Phase 3 Data Center: This data center was added to JPL’s historic Space Flight Operations Facility to support 96 data racks, with a PUE of 1.25. Cooling and power systems draw on the building’s existing infrastructure to provide near Tier-III resiliency and with new air handlers to maintain a cold aisle temperature setpoint of 75°F, as required by the client. As part of our scope, we also reinforced the data center floor to allow for enhanced loading and future buildouts.

• B67 Modular Data Center: This data center is a standalone structure with a capacity for 28 racks and an annualized PUE of 1.26. It was designed to support specific IT assets that cannot be housed in B230 due to locational redundancy requirements. The data module serves as a self-contained microgrid by drawing power from a nearby electrical bank during normal operating hours and automatically switching to a backup generator in the event of power outages. The module contains a dedicated UPS to ensure uptime as the data center switches to the backup generator during outages. For cooling, the data module employs dedicated computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units that can leverage outside air economization for the majority of hours per year.

Results

These data centers allowed NASA JPL to consolidate existing IT systems from a less efficient off-site facility. This migration has reduced NASA JPL’s energy consumption by 3.7 million kWh per year and has created more than $2MM of annual O&M savings. Additional benefits of the project include increased on-Laboratory data center capacity, improved long-term hardware access, lower-latency networking, reduced IT maintenance requirements, and significant progress achieved toward NASA’s sustainability goals.