Power is everything when it comes to data centers. Without it, you’re left with lifeless plastic and precious metals.

The tremendous challenge is that the requirements for power provision are increasing at hyper warp speeds. This is especially true in high density applications like hyperscale facilities.

You’ve got to have the power and the delivery needs to be sophisticated enough to serve emerging technology.

You don’t want a situation like you would see in those old Star Trek shows where there’s smoke and straining in the USS Enterprise’s engines and Scotty the Chief Engineer is saying with desperation, “I’m giving her all she’s got”.

With the ever-changing winds of power needs and specifications, being able to design a safe, flexible, easy-to-install power distribution system is paramount.

This is where Starline (a brand of Legrand) has amped up the industry for years with its Track Busway systems.

“Decades ago we started out with busway systems that were designed for 60 amps or so and now we’re up to 1200 amps in some of our applications,” said John Berenbrok, Manager, Product Management of Starline.

“These are for high density, hyperscale types of data center applications, where these busways are feeding endless rows and rows of servers.”

The Starline Track Busway provides for overhead power distribution featuring a continuous access slot that runs along the bottom of the system. This allows for the flexibility of being able to easily change or add to operational layouts in the future without losing any uptime.

It’s this flexibility that makes it such an attractive option for smaller facilities as well.

“These Track Busway products are also great in lab type environments,” said Berenbrok, “where you might be changing out your configurations.”

“Maybe you have the overhead busway solution in place, and you need to change out your top off locks pretty quickly. That’s kind of our claim to fame. You can basically change out an electrical circuit in a handful of minutes.”

This kind of flexibility is highly sought after with colocation data centers where rapid change is directly tied to maximum profitability and customer satisfaction.

“For a couple of years, you might be running a 20 amp single phase on a certain voltage for one customer,” said Berenbrok. “Next year another customer comes into that space and they might want to upgrade to a 30 amp three phase receptacle for additional power. We can do that pretty seamlessly.”

Although Starline is a global manufacturer with production facilities throughout the world, they are committed to being able to provide individualized layers of customization for their clients.

“Everyone would love to make the same thing over and over again and get paid a lot of money for it,” said Berenbrok. “But we’ve discovered our customers value our really big engineering department. We have application engineers all over the world in every application.”

“That allows us to customize a solution that’s right for the customer rather than just trying to sell them what we have or what’s easy for us.”

This personalization of service is why Starline is such an excellent partner with Instor, as we share these same values and goals.

Instor works closely with Starline to assist with the implementation of their Track Busway systems from design to deployment. If you have any questions and want to learn more about these Starline offerings, make sure to contact us today.