Successful Setup: The Advantage of Medium-voltage Cabling

The rise in data center usage—bolstered by the move to remote work and distance learning—has put pressure on data center owners to deliver facilities faster while increasing capacity. Today’s mission critical facilities require increasing amounts of power, which lends itself to the use of medium voltage (MV) equipment and cabling in many data center designs.  While MV can deliver more power in a smaller footprint than an equal capacity low voltage system; the MV installation comes with significantly more sensitive cable construction, installation practices, and complicated protection schemes.  For these reasons, medium voltage cable and terminations must have significant focus on quality control.  Done improperly, the lifetime of an MV cable installation can be drastically reduced from say 40 years to just a couple of years.  These early failures will cost millions of dollars’ worth of rework after the building is occupied and can create an unsafe work environment—not to mention a loss in uptime to the facility.  Fortunately, there are steps contractors can take to ensure a quality MV installation to extend the life of the system without adding cost. While a complex process, Engineering Services Manager Mike Fernholz breaks it down in 7×24 Exchange magazine’s Fall 2021 issue.