At the end of November, the Crestchic depot in Texas (USA) fulfilled a large customer order in record time, helping to ensure that the customer in question could fulfil business critical power testing obligations. The speedy fulfilment of the job saw the customer return for a further eight units just a few days later.
Steven Bacon, Business Development Manager for Crestchic USA, explains “The customer called us looking for an extremely fast turnaround. It was 2pm and they needed 17, 100kW load banks by close of business the same day. It’s a short turnaround time for any major equipment supplier, but our processes and the team’s can-do attitude meant that we fulfilled the order and the mission-critical testing was able to go ahead as planned.”
Working with a major player in the data centre industry, the customer had scheduled mission-critical tests to take place the next day. A hiccup in their existing supply chain meant that they didn’t have the specialist load banks equipment required to complete the testing.
In just two hours, the Crestchic team had sorted out all of the paperwork, processed payments, and arranged for customer collection of 17 units, including cabling and peripherals.
Customer service and fast response time
In an unforeseen turn of events, the trailer that the customer had ordered to collect the load banks from the Crestchic depot broke down on the way. With customer service at the forefront of the Texas operation, the Crestchic team waited out-of-hours for the trailer to arrive, before helping the driver to secure the load ready for the onward journey.
Steven continued, “Our internal systems and processes meant that we were able to complete an incredibly fast turnaround on this urgent order. It was great to see the team spring into action and make it happen. This particular customer has a fleet of data centres in the US and beyond, used to power a number of global apps and services. For them, having their system go down due to a power outage is just not an option. The load banks supplied will be used to check their backup power systems and ensure they will power up effectively in the event of an emergency.”
Data centre industry sees costs of downtime rise
Findings from the Uptime Institute’s 2022 Global Datacentre Survey highlight the fact that downtime in the data centre industry is becoming increasingly expensive, with the main cause identified as power failures. Further research also identifies the biggest causes of power-related outages to be uninterruptible power supply failures, followed by transfer switch (generator / grid) and generator failures. Loadbank testing allows data centre operators to fully test their systems – mitigating the costly and devastating impact of a power outage.
Second order placed with a week
Steven concludes, “The customer was extremely grateful and their director said that he would never forget how fast we worked and that he would return to us for any future load bank /power testing requirements. True to his word, the customer called for another 8 units just a few days later.”
Founded in 1983, Crestchic is one of the world’s leading specialist manufacturers of load banks which are used in the testing of power supplies in the most demanding climactic and environmental conditions across seven continents. Operating from locations in the UK, North America, Singapore, Belgium, France, Germany, China and the UAE, the company is at the forefront of innovation and design, with thriving sales and rental operations and a loyal and growing customer base worldwide.
For more information about the role of load bank testing in data centre power resilience strategies, speak to our team.
