‘Our data center operations beyond power constraint’

Though power availability in Nigeria may be the bane for other data centers and enterprises, the General Manager of MainOne Data Center, Gbenga Adegbiji has said their operations have overcome power constraints in the country.

The company, which is a subsidiary of MDXI, is currently 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 another data center operator who complained that power is a key problem across Africa and Nigeria’s power issues are on a larger scale and more constant than experienced globally.

Adegbiji faulted the report that power hungry industries such as data centers cannot successfully operate in Nigeria, claiming his company has enjoyed 90+ per cent power uptime since 2015 and is poised to achieve 95 per cent availability in 2018, based on a growing partnership with a local power distribution company.

Adegbiji stressed that the MDXI facility was purpose-built to mitigate all challenges that global businesses may have in a Nigerian data center.

He mentioned that before constructing the data center, the company realised 24/7 power supply was a critical challenge for businesses requiring high availability colocation infrastructure within Nigeria and invested in a direct private connection to the National grid through newly privatized 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 back-up arrangements, in line with the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) ANSI/TIA-942, the leading Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers.

“Though we made provision for the full complement of generators and diesel tanks with capacity of over 100,000 liters to secure the data center’s operations and guarantee 99.995% 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.