Vantage Data Centers has announced that its second Santa Clara data center (V2) is delivering an industry leading Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.12, making it one of the world’s most energy-efficient data centers.

Built from the ground up to meet the unique needs of a customer in just eight months, V2 was constructed and leased two years ahead of Vantage’s original business plan and developed in close collaboration with the single tenant now occupying the building. As a result of its advanced electrical and mechanical design, the facility will save the customer more than $72 million (mostly in power and cooling costs) during its first ten years of operation, compared to a typical data center.

V2 is also the first vertically scalable wholesale data center. Its design allows the tenant to double IT capacity within the same physical footprint without disruption. It is also a LEED® Platinum candidate data center project following in the footsteps of V3 (the first data center completed on the Vantage Santa Clara campus), which received LEED® Platinum certification in August 2011.

V2 highlights

• Vertical scalability (9 MWs to 18 MWs) allows tenants to grow (increase power densities) by up to 100% without having to build a new facility or increase physical footprint

• Outside air cooling substantially reduces energy costs and carbon footprint

• Redundant, high voltage lines running from the substation to the data center floor (combined with BDU units on the wall with 480-400 volt conversion) minimizes power loss while maximizing reliability

• LEED Platinum candidacy ensures highly productive and efficient workspaces, including class A offices and amenities.

“V2 represents an entirely new data center vision, combining the option to lease space within a customized facility with the ability to grow within an existing building without disruption and with energy and operating expense savings on par with the world’s most energy efficient data centers,” said Jim Trout, CEO of Vantage Data Centers. “V2 was built with unprecedented tenant collaboration, integrating decades of Vantage engineering and design expertise with tenant expertise and insight into critical requirements and opportunities for cost savings.”

“Not only does V2 offer the tenant savings of more than $72 million over 10 years, it is also the latest example of Vantage’s flexible approach that allows us to design and build custom data centers to extremely exacting timelines and specifications,” Trout added

“Vantage’s collaborations with their customers are the closest thing I’ve seen to an integrated whole systems design process that involves two separate institutions, and that’s not easy to do,” according to Jon Koomey, PhD, consulting professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “Typically such processes are found in product design inside companies like Apple, where the designers have complete control, but it’s rare in the data center industry for separate companies to coordinate in this way in facility construction.”

Vantage has also begun construction of V1, the third data center on the Santa Clara campus. The anchor tenant in V1, Telx, will offer a mix of colocation and interconnection services to a variety of their Silicon Valley customers, including optional services for Vantage Santa Clara tenants.