Anord, a 40-plus-year-old Irish electrical equipment vendor has expanded into the US data center market, where it is marketing a low-voltage AMS switchgear system.

The system has gone through Underwriter Laboratories (UL) testing and has been approved by the non-profit safety certification organization. Anord has established an office and manufacturing facility in Richmond, Virginia.

The company announced establishment of Anord Critical Power Inc., a wholly owned US subsidiary, and introduction of the AMS product to the US market at the DatacenterDynamics Converged conference in New York Tuesday.

Alan McCartney, director of Anord's US subsidiary, said the company had been doing business with data center clients around Europe, Middle East and Africa over the past 15 years. Most of its major clients are headquartered in the US.

“We have taken what was originally an AC-standard product and brought that to the US,” he said.

The system's advantages over competing products on the market is maximum segregation of individual components. This makes it more resilient, safer to maintain and smaller.

“To the best of our knowledge, no one else is doing that much segregation,” John Day, VP of sales and marketing for Anord's US subsidiary, said. If one of multiple circuit breakers has a fault, for example, it is contained and does not affect the system as a whole, he explained.

Because each component is enclosed in an individual compartment, the system's footprint is smaller, enabling data center operators to conserve floor space.

“When you have the segregation, you don't need as much air between [components],” Day said. “You can actually build the equipment smaller.”