Schneider Electric and Vigilent have formed an OEM partnership which will see them combine efforts in the hope of making cooling systems up to 60% more cost effective.

Vigilent technology will be embedded into Schneider’s new Data Center Operation: Cooling Optimize module, as well as an add-on module for Schneider’s StruxureWare Data Center Operation product.

These will be offered worldwide as part of the StruxureWare for Data Centers suite.

Schneider Electric will sell, install and support Vigilent’s Cooling Optimize system.

Vigilent’s technology could help Schneider’s clients to make significant savings on power by managing their cooling systems much more skillfully, said Henrik Leerberg, Schneider’s global product line director.

“Cooling systems are massively wasteful because the conditioning is often turned right up, just to be on the safe side,” Leerberg said.

“What Federspiel (the founder of Vigilent) has added is detailed information about every cooling unit and every fan and their effect on the atmosphere.”

By being able to measure, monitor and manage air flows and temperatures, data center operators no longer have to turn every unit up to maximum output, as they can be more confident about the levels of control that have been established, he said.

The upshot, said Leerberg, is that most CRAC units can be turned down by 60%.

A study by the Uptime Institute, which looked at 45 data center sites, found the average data center has four times as much cooling technology (such as fans and CRAC units) as it needs to.

On the other hand, 90% of hot spots could also be identified and eliminated.

“There is no need to over provision anymore,” Leerberg said, adding hundreds of millions of kilowatt hours could be saved globally.