Cooling a modern network at minimal cost

The paper outlines BT's approach to economic cooling of its telecommunications network equipment and details how changes in operational philosophy have been reflected in the more efficient operation of existing cooling plant. With more than 1600 small exchanges now cooled by fresh air alone (no refrigeration plant), the development of a new cooling system capable of extending this principle to much larger installations is explained in some detail. The importance that BT places on conformance with the parameters of the agreed European environmental standard, and the use of computational fluid flow dynamics modelling techniques to achieve this with new cooling system designs are discussed.