ACT Data Center Awarded LEED Platinum Certification
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Data center operator ACT (www.act.org) announced on Monday that its new data center has been awarded LEED Platinum level certification by the US Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org).
The certification makes ACT’s data center the first publicly announced LEED Platinum certified data center in the country and the first LEED Platinum certified building of any type in Iowa.
LEED is the USGBC’s leading rating system for designing and constructing the world’s most energy efficient and highest performing buildings, with Platinum being the highest level of certification within the LEEErating system.
“ACT’s board of directors supported the LEED design approach and challenged ACT staff to achieve a gold or platinum certification,” says ACT CEO Dick Ferguson. “Given that a data center had not previously achieved a gold or platinum level, this was a lofty goal.”
The data center features an energy-efficient geothermal system, which provides a significantly resilient system because the heat transfer loops are buried in the ground and the rest of the equipment is housed within the tornado resistant facility.
As a result, the system provides a cooling source that is fully protected from 250 mph wind speed, projectiles, and vandalism, while a separate highly energy efficient system incorporating dry coolers provides redundancy for the primary geothermal loop.
The dry cooler system can be used as backup or when cold Iowa outdoor conditions make using it more efficient than using the ground-source system.
LEED certification is based on a range of green design and construction features that have a positive impact on the project itself and the broader community, including sustainable site, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design.
The ACT data center also contains enhanced indoor air quality due to air quality control systems and increased ventilation rates that are more than 30 percent greater than code requirements, reduced energy usage from high-performance HVAC systems, recycled content in more than 30 percent of the total building materials, restored native prairie landscaping on 90 percent of the site, and renewable materials like cork flooring, cotton-wall insulation, aspen fiber ceiling panels, and agrifiber wood doors.
The ACT data center was designed by Neumann Monson Architects in Iowa City, KJWW Engineering Consultants’ Des Moines office, and McComas-Lacina Construction in Iowa City, while the MMS Civil Engineering Consultants of Iowa City provided both civil engineering and landscape consulting.
The design-build approach helped to achieve LEED certification for energy use, lighting, water and material use and incorporated a variety of other sustainable strategies.
