Electrical Fires in Data Centres: Reducing the Causes and Consequences

In 2021, nearly 800,000 new websites will be created every day. In order to host the data from these sites as well as existing data from companies worldwide, there are circa 5,000 Data Centres located around the globe. At present, 284 of them are resident in the UK.

Regardless of their composition or location, all Data Centres all face the same potential risks: cyber attacks (hacking, data theft and espionage, etc), vandalism (the theft of equipment, server breakage and arson, etc) and weather risks (floods, earthquakes and heatwaves, etc). The most important and damaging risk, though, remains that of electrical fires.

Data Centres are prone to hazards and heavy power loads. Any defective piece of equipment can quickly lead to a short circuit or overheating. Typically, electrical fires are caused by faulty electrical installations or equipment, power surges, short circuits, leakage currents and electric arcs realised due to the degradation of insulation and connections in old or poorly maintained installations. Potential points of origin for fires are located throughout the electrical chain and include inverters, batteries, electrical cabinets, generators, fuel tanks, cables and servers.

The amount of electricity required to keep Data Centres running alongside the combustible materials used also poses the risk of electrical fires. Extensive cabling and poor ventilation or air conditioning increases the risk of spreading any fire that may arise.

The weather may also be damaging. A heatwave, for example, can cause servers to overheat, and especially so in those Data Centres with an air conditioning system that uses outside air to cool the equipment.

Disastrous consequences

The materials of which Data Centres are composed (cables, electronic components and transformers, etc) are particularly combustible and any outbreak of fire can be devastating.

At the human level, Data Centres have teams on site who are potentially at risk in the event of a fire, mainly due to the risk of flames or smoke emissions which can be corrosive and reduce visibility in the event of evacuation and emergency intervention. In the case of Data Centres located in populated areas, the risk to people living nearby must also be taken into account.

At an economic level, the fire that broke out in an OVH Data Centre in Strasbourg recently led to the shutdown of 3.6 million websites for several days and realised a huge blow to e-commerce markets across Europe.

The damage is generally divided into material (the physical destruction of servers and equipment on site) and immaterial (the loss of professional data for hosted companies and the closure of their sites and servers). The costs can then be staggering with the construction of a large data centre costing hundreds of millions of dollars. According to Gartner, the financial cost to companies for using Data Centres is an average of $5,600 per minute and up to $540,000 per hour for the largest companies.

Finally, the environmental impact should not be overlooked. Data Centres are filled with electronic components and rare metals: materials that can pollute the environment. In addition, there are fumes from the melting of plastics surrounding the electrical cables that could cause harmful airborne emissions for anyone present, as well as further risk of contamination and pollution.

In search of a solution

Although the causes of a fire affecting a building can be multiple (ie human negligence, thermal or even electrostatic or chemical), nearly a quarter of those recently assessed were due to a defective electrical installation: a short-circuit, an overcurrent or a surge.

Therefore, it’s incumbent upon Data Centre management teams to launch regular compliance audits in order to keep in step with regulations. In terms of fire prevention. For example, they can implement better fire detection systems and use more modern technologies such as thermal cameras in order to detect heat islands.

Among other innovative power and electrical connection technology solutions, Data Centre management teams can look towards flexible, lugless conductors that are not yet widely used in the industry combined with high-strength, low-smoke, halogen-free, flame-retardant thermoplastic insulation.

Ideal alternatives to heavy gauge cables or rigid copper rods, these flexible, electrolytically tinned copper insulated rods reduce the contact area with copper conductors and can be used even in environments exceeding 100°C (essential for Data Centres).

Halogen-free, flame retardant insulation (glow-wire tested at 960°C to IEC 60695-2 and self-extinguishing to UL 94-V0) provides these solutions with benefits such as reduced toxic smoke (to IEC 60754-1, IEC 62821-1 and UL 2885) and fire spread, with the ultimate goal of preserving the electrical installation.

In addition to the obvious safety gains, these systems also offer several advantages. Cost savings are one of them as they eliminate the need to install the terminal lugs required for wire connections. Compact and easy to maintain, these solutions also reduce the risk of human error. In addition, they optimise the design of electrical connections by multiplying and improving the possibilities of connection.

Standards, fire prevention systems, innovative electrical solutions: all the conditions are in place to enable Data Centre owners to upgrade their sites and better control fire risks. This is all the more important in view of the fact that. in the future, sectors such as banking and finance will have an increasing requirement for Data Centre use and will be even more demanding in terms of the security and safety of those locations where their data is hosted.

More importantly, perhaps, the environmental and human impact when things go wrong will become an increasingly core consideration for Data Centre owners and managers who’ll be keenly focusing their attentions on investing in the best ways in which to mitigate risk in all its forms.

Ash Crompton is Commercial Director (EMEA) at nVent

*Further information is available online at www.nvent.com