Critical cooling specialist, Airedale, has commenced full scale production at its United States chiller plant in Rockbridge, Virginia.
Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Airedale is now proud to operate from additional facilities in Consett (UK), Guadalajara (Spain), Dubai (UAE), Rockbridge (US) and Grenada (US).
This milestone is part of a global expansion strategy and in response to high demand for energy and water efficient cooling solutions for a data centre market expanding to meet the demands of a planet increasingly reliant on data.
The plant in Rockbridge has started production of OptiChillair-cooled chillers, which have been engineered specifically for the data centre market and designed by Airedale’s DCS engineering team at the global centre of excellence in Leeds, UK.
Teams from Leeds have travelled back and forth between the UK and US over the past few months in order to support the US plant in building and testing prototypes for the OptiChill range. Following the completion of its prototype program, full production has now begun.
The OptiChill units each provide over 1MW of cooling and have been specially engineered for the demanding and expanding data centre market.
The chillers have been designed with enhanced free cooling technology, glycol containment, an on-board variable speed pump, harmonic filtration, high capacity twin screw compressors, high water temperatures and acoustic insulation features.
There is also enhanced controls including fast start, load limiting and intelligent management of compressors, refrigerant and pumps.
Airedale’s Rockbridge facility is ideally located to serve the US market, with Virginia being the largest data centre region in the world.
Northern Virginia is home to more than 20 per cent (100) of all known hyperscale data centres worldwide.