News
Measures to secure the supply of electricity for its data centers


Originally published in ficolo.com in 2022.
Due to the current geopolitical situation and its effects on European energy supplies, Ficolo has analyzed the situation related to the increased risk of electrical power distribution outages and evaluated the needed mitigation measures. Ficolo ensures the continuity of the data center services in all situations, with own power backup systems and supply arrangements.
As part of our ISO 22301 certified management system for business continuity, identifying and analyzing risks is part of our ongoing work. Ficolo is certified for its ability to respond to disruptions and to provide continuous services. One category of risks and potential disruptions to be assessed is the lack of provision of critical resources by subcontractors. This is a risk that Ficolo has recently assessed in light of the current energy situation in Europe and has sought to take into account potential power outages in its assessment.
The power supply to the datacenters have been backed up with several redundant systems. All Ficolo datacenters, The Air, The Rock, and The Deck, have backup power systems that also include diesel generators. In The Air and The Rock datacenters, the diesel generators are redundant in capacity and distribution paths towards the datacenter suites, so that loss of one generator does not cause any outage in the datacenter power supply. The backup power systems are maintained accordingly and monthly tested. The total amount of diesel fuel at each Ficolo site is sized to meet customer and standard requirements, at minimum 24hours.
However, in the situation of a longer outage in the provision of main electricity to the datacenter, the diesel generators’ fuel reserve and its provisioning becomes a critical factor. In this new energy situation, this factor has been taken into account in the assessment of the situation. As an action, Ficolo has made an agreement with a service provider to store the amount Ficolo needs and within 6 hours to distribute to all Ficolo datacenters supplementary fuel.
Ficolo is a member of the cooperation pool of the Finnish National Emergency Supply Agency and thus has a status of an infrastructure provider for critical services for the society. Based on this status, Ficolo negotiates with the local electricity distributors for prioritization of its supply.
Ficolo is monitoring and evaluating closely the energy situation in Finland. In case of outages in the supply of electricity to Ficolo’s datacenter occur, the continuity of the datacenter services is assured dependably with the backup power systems, the reserved energy capacity, and the supply arrangements that Ficolo has prepared.
For more information, please contact [email protected] / +358 2 624 8501.