Power not constraint to our data centre operations —MDXI boss

Though electricity availability in Nigeria may be the bane for other data centres and enterprises, but this appears not be the case with MainOne Data Centre subsidiary, MDXI.

According to the General Manager of MDXI, Mr Gbenga Adegbiji, in spite of the worsening electricity supply in the country, the MDXI data centre is achieving almost 100 per cent power uptime availability, with a surmountable over 90 per cent of that power coming directly from the national grid.

He stated this while reacting to a report published in the media that was quoted to a data centre operator who complained that power is a key problem across Africa and that Nigeria’s power issues are on a larger scale and more constant than experienced globally.

Adegbiji debunked the myth that power-hungry industries such as data centres cannot successfully operate in Nigeria, claiming its company has enjoyed 90+ percent power uptime since 2015 and that it is poised to achieve 95 percent availability in 2018, based on a growing partnership with a local power distribution company.

During an interview at the data centre recently, Adegbiji stressed that the MDXI facility was purpose-built to mitigate all challenges that global businesses may have in a Nigerian data centre.

He mentioned that before constructing the data centre, the company realised 24×7 power supply was a critical challenge for businesses requiring high availability collocation infrastructure within Nigeria and invested in a direct private connection to the National grid through the newly-privatised Eko Electricity Distribution Plc.

“We recognised the crippling impact of downtimes, the peculiarities of the Nigerian power environment as an albatross that had forced many companies to relocate outside Nigeria and ensured MDXI was established with the most robust electricity power and backup arrangements, in line with the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) ANSI/TIA-942, the leading Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centres.

“Though we made provision for the full complement of generators and diesel tanks with a capacity of over 100,000 litres to secure the data centre’s operations and guarantee 99.995 percent availability, we also partnered with Eko Disco and co-invested in a dedicated 33KV feeder and line connection to the National Grid through the Ajah sub-station.

“Connecting directly to the grid provides us access to multiple power generating plants and guarantees backup in the event that one power plant goes down. This was a capital investment of hundreds of millions in substation equipment and dedicated power lines which bypass all ‘last-mile’ challenges encountered in electricity distribution. This has guaranteed an increase in power availability at the data centre from 50 percent average commercial power availability to between 95 percent and 98 percent,” Adegbiji said.

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