Data Centers

Our Approach

Services and solutions that help you meet your goals for uptime, modularity, and sustainability.

Our Solutions

Critical protection and monitoring, wide-scale automation, renewable energy integration, and secure networking tailored to your operational needs.

See how we solve the problem

Our Services

Design, implementation, and integration streamlined by our team of qualified engineers.

Partner with us to get it done

Our Support

We strive to be not just a vendor, but a partner you can rely on.

See how we support our partners

Our Approach

For nearly 40 years, SEL has specialized in designing, manufacturing, and implementing solutions for power system challenges. In the event of an electrical fault or unexpected outage, our fast-tripping digital relays and sophisticated automation systems respond quickly to isolate problematic portions of your power system and automatically balance load and demand using alternative power sources.

Scalable Designs

The Uptime Institute categorizes data centers into four tiers based on their ability to handle planned and unplanned service disruptions. These tiers cover a broad spectrum of facilities, ranging from data centers with annual downtime in the dozens of hours to hyperscalers that never go offline.

We design our solutions to scale effectively at every stage of that spectrum, allowing you to deploy new facilities rapidly with highly configurable, switchgear-agnostic protection and control solutions. At the enterprise level, these solutions streamline electrical power management system (EPMS) integration and enable centralization for large-scale designs.

Sustainable Solutions

We believe sustainability is an important factor to consider throughout the construction and continued operation of your data center. Reduce your carbon footprint with SEL microgrid controls, which help you seamlessly integrate renewable energy sources such as:

Solar
Wind
Geothermal
Battery storage

SEL engages in our own sustainable and environmentally responsible practices through:

Continuous efforts on our campuses, including the use of SEL meters to reduce our daily water consumption by over 4,000 gallons.
Custom-engineered molds made of recycled foam to minimize packaging and shipping waste.
High-quality products designed and manufactured to stay in service for over 20 years.

Securely Manufactured in the U.S.A.

SEL specializes in creating digital products and systems that protect, control, and automate electric power systems. Headquartered in Pullman, Washington, we manufacture all our electronic devices in the United States and serve customers worldwide.

We believe that a robust foundation in cybersecurity needs to start at the component level. To that end, we’ve developed a five-part approach to supply chain security:

Build trusted supply chain networks by fostering strong supplier partnerships.
Ensure component integrity and availability while minimizing the impact of disruptions.
Verify the security of firmware and software with rigorous internal testing and digital signatures.
Protect operations and control access with a layered approach to security, including exhaustive background checks for all SEL employees.
Monitor for quality and security vulnerabilities, releasing service and security bulletins when applicable and supporting customers in their implementation.

Learn more about our supply chain security practices

Our Solutions

Every solution from SEL delivers field-proven reliability by starting with the fundamentals of protection. Our products are designed to protect critical power system equipment against failure or damage—tripping for faults when they’re supposed to and, just as importantly, not tripping when they shouldn’t.

Beyond the fundamentals of protection, tailor solutions to your operational needs with automated failover to adjacent sites, extensive analytics and reporting, and strict OT cybersecurity.

Critical Protection

Power system protection has always been the core of SEL’s mission. Our comprehensive catalog of solutions helps ensure uninterrupted power to servers and cooling systems.

Protect utility interconnections using IEEE C37.118 synchrophasors and enhanced circuit breaker monitoring.
Take advantage of features such as an intuitive touchscreen, adaptable I/O options, and detailed event analysis for feeder protection.
Integrate overcurrent protection, Time-Domain Link (TiDL) technology, and dynamic zone configuration into your bus protection.
Guarantee motor operation using differential protection, broken rotor bar detection, and comprehensive asset monitoring.
Safeguard transformers with multiwinding protection, frequency tracking, and through-fault monitoring and protection.
Protect and control generators using current differential protection, islanding detection, and breaker wear monitoring.
Add arc-flash protection to reduce incident energy by up to 88%, helping keep operations and maintenance personnel safe and limit equipment damage—even during a catastrophic event.

Power Quality Monitoring

Our power quality and usage monitoring devices are fully Class A-compliant to the IEC 61000-4-30 power quality standard. They also exceed ANSI C12.20-2015 0.1 and IEC 62053-22:2003 0.1 S accuracy class requirements, enabling operators to identify power system anomalies and isolate their source with confidence.

With reliable Class A measurement, colocation facilities can simplify client billing and management.

Microgrid and Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Control

Our intelligent, scalable powerMAX microgrid controls are ranked first on the Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard and ensure continued power stability for your facility using a three-step “separate, survive, and synchronize” algorithm. Upon sensing a power disturbance from the bulk power system, SEL powerMAX automatically:

Separates your system from the rest of the electric grid.
Dispatches available DERs and performs seamless load balancing to keep critical equipment operational.
Synchronizes your DERs back to the utility and reconnects to the grid upon sensing the bulk power system has resumed normal activity.

Redundant Power With Automated Control

For larger facilities with demanding operational requirements—such as more complex distribution systems and additional server racks—fully redundant power systems ensure continuous operation in the event of equipment failure or an unexpected outage.

Our real-time automation controllers (RTACs) help prevent outages from affecting your customers by enabling automated failover to an adjacent site. Designed to be entirely switchgear-agnostic, RTACs can be installed in any system and communicate with any other protective equipment. Choose the automation controller that best suits your needs; we’ll sort out the rest.

Analytics and Reporting

Advanced automated data reporting and analysis provides access to useful metrics for improving energy efficiency. SEL Blueframe—our security-first, container-based platform for OT applications—includes multiple applications expressly designed for that purpose. Simplify the ongoing management of your system of devices with the Data Management and Automation (DMA) application suite, which collects, stores, and manages device-specific information.

Our Services

From consulting and design to installation and commissioning, SEL is a full-service partner with the added expertise and connections that come with manufacturing the products we install.

Our teams of experienced engineers are prepared to assist you by standardizing protection scheme designs, performing system modeling and studies, and testing your system for cybersecurity preparedness.

Design Standardization and Implementation

Our teams work with you to standardize protection scheme designs across dozens of facilities, expediting development and construction for new data centers and streamlining upgrades for existing facilities.

Learn more about Engineering Services Protection

System Modeling and Studies

We use advanced modeling and simulation, informed by decades of power engineering experience, to analyze system requirements, validate full system designs, and optimize the performance of the power system through the devices that protect and control it.

With the actual protection and control hardware that will be installed in your system wired into our Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) test bed, we use our extensive library of validated power system models to systematically test thousands of faults and adverse scenarios, providing the equivalent of years of operational history in only a few days.

Learn more about System Modeling and Studies

Cybersecurity Preparedness

Strengthen your OT defenses and streamline the demands of maintenance and compliance. Partner with our engineers to evaluate cybersecurity controls, centralize asset management, develop secure remote access, and more.

Learn more about Cybersecurity preparedness

Engineering Services Protection

Take advantage of SEL’s expertise in protection systems and hardware by having our engineers specify, design, implement, test, and commission your protection systems.

Engineering Services—Cybersecurity

Our cybersecurity professionals provide secure solutions tailored to your priorities and objectives.

Our Support

We believe you should never have to worry about whether your protection and control systems will be working when you need them most. That’s why every device we manufacture comes with a 10-year warranty and free technical support.

It’s been this way at SEL since the company was founded nearly 40 years ago—a major reason why we’re North America’s most trusted provider of protective relays and ranked #1 by international utilities in price, service, and support.

The Industry’s Best Warranty

SEL devices are designed for a working life of at least 20 years, and every SEL-manufactured device comes with a 10-year warranty—the best in the electric power industry. If it fails under warranty, repair and replacement are free.

We always do all that we can to repair any returned product, whether it meets our warranty or not.

Proven Reliability

SEL products are designed and manufactured for the world’s most challenging environments, exceeding all industry standards for temperature, shock, and electric stress. An optional conformal coating for circuit boards adds an extra level of protection against contaminants in extreme environments.

Our products have a mean time between returns for repair (MTBR) of more than 250 years, based on observed field performance. This means that if you have 250 SEL products installed in your systems, you can expect to have less than one unscheduled removal from service per year for any reason, whether it’s a defect or an external factor such as overvoltage, overcurrent, wildlife damage, or environmental exposure.

Lifetime Product Support

Every device we manufacture comes with free lifetime technical support.

SEL support teams are stationed in regional offices around the world and staffed with application engineers who are experts in our products and in power system applications.

No matter how often you need to call or how long your SEL products have been in service, our customer service and technical support professionals are ready to help.

Security Bulletins and Updates

We notify product owners of updates and security patches for the full life of the product. Software and firmware updates are distributed directly to our customers via secure file transfer, and their authenticity and integrity are verifiable through digital signatures and cryptographic hashes.

SEL Process for Disclosing Security Vulnerabilities

Cybersecurity Support

Cyber services support contracts can include incident response, audits, system hardening, patch and update management, and more, depending on your anticipated needs.

We also practice secure supply chain management and help our customers comply with applicable supply chain and cybersecurity standards (for instance, NERC CIP-013 for certain North American utilities).

Contact SEL Cyber Services

Warranty and Technical Support

SEL product warranty and reliability information—plus how to return a product or contact tech support.

Security Notifications and Updates

Stay informed on cyber vulnerabilities and keep your SEL products up to date.