Evaporatively Cooled Data Center - Yahoo!, Avenches, Switzerland

Before

After

Category: Data Center

Square Footage: 34,681 sq ft

Services Provided: HVAC, Plumbing

Completion Date: 2010

Owner: Yahoo!

Architect: Burckhardt + Partner Architects

General Contractor: M+W

This warehouse building was located in an area with excellent connectivity and inexpensive power which attracted Yahoo to build their second Switzerland data center at this location. Pragmatic PE analyzed the local weather throughout the year and determined that refrigeration cooling would not be required even at the hottest summer weather conditions. The 3.2-megaWatt data center is entirely cooled by filtered outdoor air supplemented with evaporative cooling on hot summer days.

The building came with an underground nuclear wartime bunker that included a 70,000-liter concrete water storage tank. It was not feasible to remove this tank as part of the construction, so Pragmatic PE offered to analyze whether it could be used in conjunction with a rainwater harvesting system. The client bought into the idea and Pragmatic PE utilized the existing roof as the catchment surface to harness rain into this existing storage tank for use in the evaporative cooling system. The system achieves almost 25% load penetration into the water consumption of the building’s evaporative cooling system.

With 100% evaporative cooling and rainwater harvesting, this data center is one of the most sustainable in the world.