Puget Sound Energy Modular Data Centers across Washington

Ensuring Digital Infrastructure Stability and Flexibility in Critical Environments

As one of the Pacific Northwest’s largest electricity and natural gas providers, it is imperative that Puget Sound Energy (PSE) always provide structural and system excellence.

When PSE was faced with low server storage and a lack of power and cooling capacity to meet consumer needs of redundancy within their existing IT infrastructure, a massive update prioritizing stability to data center operations was critical.

An east and west site were strategically chosen to maintain uptime during potential weather events or other localized interruptions. The new data centers would require at a minimum:

• 99% uptime
• Redundant uninterruptable power supply (UPS) system/backup generator with at least N+1 power solution
• Redundant HVAC system with at least N+1 chiller plant and N+1 on-air handling units
• Cooling efficiencies infrastructure
• Accommodation of 10% grown per year for servers and storage
• Space for 90 racks and IT load capacity of 450kW

McKinstry’s integrated mechanical and electrical teams provided engineering expertise and skilled field teams while leveraging their existing knowledge of data center construction. The BASELAYER modular data center was able to provide containerized, modular data center components that offer scalable flexibility and a low initial cost. Together, all teams were able to deliver two, identical data centers, while also consolidating data from PSE’s four existing data centers across Washington.