DataGryd has opened an energy-efficient data center, complete with combined heating, cooling and power plant, in the original Western Union Building in New York City.

The 80-year old building has undergone a comprehensive infrastructure retrofit to meet the demands of an urban green data center, DataGryd said. The company expects the onsite 9 MW CHP plant, fueled by natural gas and designed under EPA guidelines, to reduce overall power consumption by about 30 percent. The data center also has a backup diesel generator with 26,000 gallons of fuel storage.

The CHP plant uses Solar Turbines’ Mercury 50 recuperated natural gas turbines and a double-effect absorption chiller from Broad USA, which runs on heat energy from the gas turbines to cool the data center. DataGryd said its customers will be able to design their own scalable data center whitespace, with help from the company, to manage their use of the CHP and backup diesel generator.

The multi-floor, 250,000 sq ft data center will also have the capacity to load-shed for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the city, shifting utility customers’ electrical load to DataGryd’s CHP, diesel generators, or a combination of both, the company said.

DataGryd also said that is the first company to install lightweight low-voltage direct current superconductor cables from AMSC. These carry the same amount of current as heavy conventional copper conductors with negligible voltage drop, the company said.

Jack McCall, managing director of AMSC’s superconductor power systems,  said the cables eliminate the limitations of copper in maintaining voltage, and opens up a more efficient layout and design for a data center simply because the cables are not restricted by length. The superconductor cables carry power with near-perfect efficiency, McCall said.