British colocation specialist Volta has started offering an unusual guarantee: if customers at its data center in London lose power, even for an instant, they will get a whole year of service for free.

The relevant clause has been introduced into Volta’s Platinum Power Service Level Agreement (SLA), and the company believes it has the potential to disrupt the local data center market.

The initiative was announced on Wednesday at the DatacenterDynamics Europe conference in London.

I’ve got the power

Volta was established in 2012, with its first facility located in close proximity to the City of London. The 91,000 square feet data center on Great Sutton Street occupies a building that previously hosted the European headquarters of the Reuters news agency.

It was refitted to comply with Tier III standards, and benefits from two separate 33kV power feeds - something that ensures uninterruptible power in all but most extreme cases.

Now, Volta has decided to promote its reliable power supply and offer an SLA that guarantees 100 percent power availability.

“This SLA disrupts the small print and is a great model that increases competitiveness and choice within the data center market,” said Jon Arnold, managing director at Volta Data Centers.

“The cloud has transformed the way businesses operate and we feel it’s time for data centers to become more competitive and make changes to their service offerings. We are putting our money where our mouth is; with two resilient power connections from two main grid stations and our own 33kV transformers on site, we are confident we will always have power for our customers.”

The Platinum Power SLA will be offered to new customers that wish to locate their racks at the Sutton Street facility. Volta says the offer is especially suitable for organizations in finance, legal and media sectors.

Earlier this year, Volta launched a new utility-based billing scheme, allowing non-committed customers to pay for colocation services by the hour.