A data center switchgear refers to the critical infrastructure component within a data center that facilitates the efficient and reliable distribution of electrical power to various equipment and systems. It typically consists of electrical switchboards, circuit breakers, transformers, and other protective devices, all designed to regulate and control the flow of electricity.
Data center switchgear plays a vital role in ensuring uninterrupted power supply, load balancing, fault protection, and overall operational stability of the data center environment. By managing the power distribution, switchgear helps maintain uptime.
What are the Types of Data Center Switchgear?
Every data center has its own unique power requirements. A data center manager must determine how much power is required for their data center to function to determine what switchgear is best suited for the job. There are two types of switchgears:
- Low voltage switchgear uses up to 1,000 volts of electric power. Low voltage switchgear has compartments such as breaker compartments, bus compartments, and cable compartments which assist in delivering energy to a data center.
- Medium voltage switchgear uses 1,000-69,000 volts of electric power. Medium voltage switchgear can also be known as gas-insulated switchgear, metal-clad switchgear, metal-enclosed switchgear, pad-mounted switchgear, vault/subsurface switchgear, and arc resistant switchgear depending on what it utilizes to deliver energy to a data center.
Track and Manage Your Data Center Power Chain with DCIM Software
Knowing the details about the objects in your power chain, such as the switchgear, is key to knowing your power capacity and utilization, understanding the health of your system, maintaining uptime, ensuring redundancy, and simplifying troubleshooting, maintenance, and planning.
With modern Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software, you can track all the items in your power chain from the power source down to the compute devices and track their electrical characteristics and interconnections. This makes it easy to understand the power capacity and load at any node in the system.
DCIM software also automatically generates dynamic and interactive single-line diagrams that help you visualize your power chain in a single pane of glass. You can track the utility feed, generators and fuel tanks, transformers, load devices, UPS units, AC panels, floor PDUs, DC power plants, and DC bays, track all draw-out breaker and disconnect switches, track breaker status, and see a details panel for each node that includes budgeted and actual values for voltage, current, power rating, highest/lowest phase, and more.
Want to see how Sunbird’s award-winning DCIM software simplifies power chain management? Get your free test drive now.