In August, global HVAC manufacturer Nortek's datacenter and air solutions divisions had two announcements. For one, a price increase ranging from 8 to 12% on Nortek products is set to take effect by Aug. 16. The increase is a result of surging commodity prices and materials shortages with steel, copper, aluminum and resin, along with third-party component vendor price increases.

Nortek also recently announced its first deployment of StatePoint cooling technology with the datacenter Platform RackBank, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. St. Louis-based Nortek Data Center Cooling offers StatePoint, which uses a semi-permeable membrane exchanger that completely separates water from the air stream, resulting in significant PUE and WUE savings.

StatePoint's first deployment with RackBank will cool an upcoming GigaCampus — a massive first phase, 180 MW project that will foster growing Asian economies and companies with state-of-the-art infrastructure. The unique project will serve as a future-secured platform for data-driven companies to thrive in a 100-percent clean energy facility with zero carbon footprint. 

StatePoint technology will help RackBank reach its sustainability goals, because it boasts a global-leading partial power usage effectiveness (pPUE) and water usage effectiveness (WUE) as low as 1.05 and 0.09, respectively, depending on local climate conditions. The refrigerant-free StatePoint’s cutting-edge indirect evaporative methodology and its patented microporous membrane heat exchange process, historically reduce water consumption in data centers by up to 90-percent versus traditional chilled water cooling technology. Consequently, StatePoint technology will help position RackBank as a data center industry leader in conserving one of India’s most limited natural resources.  

“Nortek has recently worked with a prominent social media hyperscaler and its StatePoint yielded better results than any other cooling technology,” says Narendra Sen, RackBank’s founder and CEO. “StatePoint technology capabilities will not only help us attain our sustainability goals, but also conserve water, which is a scarce resource in India.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Rackbank on their upcoming projects with our state-of-the-art StatePoint technology to support their aggressive PUE and WUE targets,” says Kevin Facinelli, President, Nortek Data Center Cooling. “This partnership helps to expand our Asian data center market, which is growing the fastest.”

StatePoint will also be the preferred cooling solutions provider in RankBank’s 500MW PAN India expansion plans in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Pune and other Indian cities. Construction is expected to start in late 2021 at the Chennai GigaCampus.