Summary
- Vertiv and Tema Energy have completed a modular infrastructure deployment for an unnamed major Romanian telecommunications provider.
- The architecture combines UPS, power distribution, monitoring, cooling, and containment in repeatable configurations across multiple sites.
- Customer identity, site count, combined MW capacity, and project value have not been disclosed.
Vertiv and Romanian integrator Tema Energy have deployed a standardised modular infrastructure architecture across multiple data centres operated by a major Romanian telecommunications provider, aiming to make future capacity expansion possible without redesigning each site from the ground up.
The customer has not been named. Vertiv said the operator runs critical facilities supporting nationwide mobile, fixed, and digital services and required an infrastructure model that could expand in phases while existing systems remained operational.
The deployment combines modular UPS capacity, power distribution and monitoring, thermal-management systems, containment, and repeatable site designs. Free-cooling chillers and row-based cooling have been used where appropriate to the individual facilities.
Vertiv has not disclosed the number of data centres included, their combined electrical capacity, how much additional IT load the project enables, or the commercial value of the deployment. Those omissions limit direct comparison with other Romanian infrastructure projects.
The operational principle is nevertheless clear: the telecoms provider is trying to reduce the amount of bespoke engineering required every time a live facility needs additional capacity.
Repeatable designs reduce upgrade complexity
Data centre estates built over many years frequently contain several generations of critical infrastructure. UPS systems, cooling arrangements, monitoring platforms, switchgear, and control philosophies can vary from site to site as facilities are expanded or acquired.
That variation creates operational overhead. Maintenance teams need to understand different systems, spare-parts inventories become broader, engineering procedures are harder to standardise, and each capacity upgrade can resemble a new design exercise.
A repeatable modular architecture can reduce some of that complexity by establishing standard electrical and thermal building blocks that can be adapted to individual sites. The approach does not make every facility identical, but it gives engineering teams a common starting point.
Local conditions still determine the final arrangement. Available floor area, utility capacity, cooling plant, ambient climate, redundancy requirements, existing infrastructure, and maintenance access can all require modifications to the standard design.
The modular approach can also allow work to be divided into smaller phases. That is particularly useful in live telecoms environments where operators cannot take an entire facility out of service while new UPS or cooling capacity is installed.
Expansion instead has to be sequenced around existing critical loads, with redundancy preserved while equipment is isolated, connected, commissioned, and brought into operation.
Power and cooling expand together
The Romanian project combines power and thermal systems because adding one without the other does not create usable data centre capacity. Electrical headroom that cannot be cooled cannot support additional IT load, while spare cooling plant is equally ineffective if the site has no remaining electrical capacity.
Row-based cooling can place thermal capacity closer to the racks, while free-cooling systems can reduce mechanical refrigeration requirements when outside conditions allow. The performance of either approach depends on the facility layout, temperatures, airflow or fluid architecture, and local climate.
Monitoring provides the other layer of the expansion strategy. As modular blocks are added, operators need visibility over load, capacity, alarms, and the interaction between older and newer infrastructure. Standardising the monitoring environment can make a distributed estate easier to manage than separate sites built around unrelated control systems.
Vertiv and Tema Energy also have an ongoing service relationship around the customer’s infrastructure, with support dating from 2020. Long-term service becomes particularly relevant where standardisation is intended to simplify operations across several locations rather than deliver a one-off equipment installation.
The project remains vendor-led and the lack of disclosed capacity figures prevents any calculation of how much usable data centre capacity has been added. Its significance lies instead in the operating model: a live telecoms estate is being treated as a repeatable infrastructure platform rather than a collection of independent facilities.
As operators continue to retrofit and expand existing sites, that ability to reuse tested electrical and cooling designs can reduce engineering effort and commissioning risk — provided the standard remains flexible enough to accommodate the constraints of each building.
