Summary
- Redcentric has completed a multi-million-pound electrical infrastructure upgrade at its Heathrow Corporate Park data centre.
- Centiel supplied StratusPower modular UPS equipment to protect 7MW of critical load, with the design able to scale to 10.5MW.
- The upgrade replaced legacy UPS infrastructure, increased efficiency from below 90% to more than 97%, and was completed with zero downtime.
Redcentric has completed a multi-million-pound electrical infrastructure upgrade at its Heathrow Corporate Park data centre, replacing legacy UPS equipment and increasing the site’s protected power capacity.
The project used Centiel StratusPower modular uninterruptible power supply equipment to protect an existing 7MW critical load. The design allows the facility to scale to 10.5MW without further major infrastructure changes.
Reported UPS operating efficiency has risen from below 90% to more than 97%, and the upgrade was completed with zero downtime. The work forms part of a wider programme at Redcentric’s London West colocation facility, which offers racks, cages, private suites, complete data halls, and on-site office space.
Live facilities leave little room for error
UPS replacement is one of the more sensitive retrofit tasks in a live data centre. Legacy power protection equipment often reaches a point where maintenance risk, efficiency loss, component availability, and capacity limits start to outweigh the disruption of replacement. The difficult part is that the systems being replaced are also responsible for protecting the load during utility interruptions and power quality events.
Redcentric’s project involved the live replacement of legacy UPS infrastructure before end of life. Centiel supplied 14 500kW modular UPS systems, and Durata carried out the installation work. The removal of inefficient legacy equipment reduced physical footprint and improved resilience through modular architecture, according to the project partners.
The efficiency gain is more than an accounting improvement. Moving from sub-90% UPS efficiency to more than 97% can reduce electrical losses across the protected power chain. In a high-utilisation facility, those losses translate into cost, heat, and cooling demand. Less wasted power also means less heat to remove from plant spaces.
The modular design gives Redcentric headroom as customer requirements change. A system that can scale to 10.5MW without another major electrical rebuild gives the operator capacity to support additional load while limiting future disruption. That is valuable in London and Heathrow, where new capacity faces power, land, and planning pressure.
AI demand reaches existing assets
Redcentric has indicated that further power protection is being considered for two refurbished data halls being configured to support future AI workloads. That places the Heathrow upgrade inside a wider market shift: existing colocation sites are being asked to accommodate more demanding compute profiles without the clean-sheet design advantages of a new hyperscale campus.
AI workloads can raise rack power density and change load profiles. Even where a facility is not built for the largest training clusters, customers may require higher-density zones for inference, analytics, private AI, or accelerated computing. Existing sites therefore need to examine whether UPS, switchgear, cooling plant, airflow containment, structural loading, and monitoring systems can support the next generation of deployments.
Retrofitting can bring capacity online faster than new construction, especially in markets where land and grid connections are constrained. It can also extend asset life and improve energy performance. The trade-off is operational complexity: staged switching, temporary resilience arrangements, careful commissioning, contractor control, and clear customer communication.
The Heathrow work also shows how resilience and efficiency can be improved through practical plant replacement rather than headline new-build announcements. Data centre decarbonisation often depends on these interventions: reducing electrical losses, improving maintainability, preparing halls for higher-density use, and extending the life of assets that already have power and connectivity.
For Redcentric, the upgrade strengthens a strategically located London facility while giving the site more operational headroom. It is a retrofit rather than a campus launch, but in constrained metro markets, improving existing powered capacity can be as commercially important as adding new floorspace.
