Verizon Terremark, the data center services business of Verizon, has expanded power capacity at its Santa Clara, California, data center by 4MW using Active Power's electrical infrastructure containers it put on the facility's roof.

Real estate is tight and expensive in Silicon Valley, so putting the PowerHouse containers, which include uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, switchgear and monitoring and control equipment, on the roof was a good option for expanding capacity without expanding the building.

Each container includes Active Power's CleanSource UPS, input and distrubition switchboards, automatic transfer switch controls, an air conditioning system, fire detection equipment and monitoring and control panels.

To get 4MW of mission critical capacity, Verizon deployed four PowerHouse units.

Ben Stewart, senior VP of facility engineering at Verizon, said in addition to space constraints, the company was also looking for better efficiency. “PowerHouse modular units are energy and space efficient, which give us flexibility to manage power consumption to best serve the needs of our clients and limit energy and equipment waste,” he said.

In October, Verizon rolled out public cloud services similar to those provided by Amazon but with an enterprise angle. The company plans to offer both compute and storage as a service.

Verizon bought Terremark in 2011 for US$1.4bn. The company has a massive data center footpring, spanning North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.