High-Density Data Center Design, Nigeria

A government agency in Nigeria engaged UBIK for the concept and schematic design of a new data center of 1.6 MW of IT load, delivered in 2026. The facility integrates zones of very high density, up to 45 kW per rack, alongside conventional halls, and the design covers every discipline: power, cooling, fire protection, security, low-current systems and the building’s technical spaces. The client’s identity is withheld.

The facility

At 45 kW per rack, room air no longer carries the heat. The high-density zones are designed around close-coupled cooling and containment, with the chilled-water distribution, the floor loading and the power distribution to the row sized for the density rather than for the hall average. The conventional halls and the high-density zones share the central plant, which is staged so that the facility runs efficiently at the load of its first years and grows in step with the agency’s systems.

The power system is designed for long and frequent grid outages. Standby generation and fuel autonomy carry the load through them, the generator plant is designed to run regularly under load, and the resilience objective is written in Tier terms so that every path can be taken out of service with the load supported.

Scope

• Design basis: the load profile by hall and zone, the density assumptions, the resilience objective, the environmental envelope and the climate design conditions.
• Concept and schematic design of the electrical system: utility intake, standby generation, UPS, distribution to the rows, with the failure and maintenance states drawn out.
• Concept and schematic design of the cooling system: central plant, chilled-water distribution, close-coupled cooling and containment for the high-density zones.
• Fire protection, security, low-current and telecommunications coordination, and the technical spaces of the building.

What the work had to resolve

A high-density zone needs its own engineering within the hall. The isolation and redundancy of its cooling have to be designed at the row, the power distribution to it has to carry three to four times the current of a conventional row, and its containment has to be maintainable by the team that will run it. The design resolved those at schematic stage, in the model, so that the agency’s construction tender describes a buildable and maintainable arrangement for each zone.

The West African context set the rest: the grid’s reliability, the climate’s heat and humidity, the logistics of equipment that arrives by sea and road, and the local authority requirements for a government facility.

The design, the site and the agency’s requirements are not published.