Data Center Insights: Joe Reele, Schneider Electric

The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry.

Here’s a look at the Q4 2025 insights from Joe Reele, Vice President, Datacenter Solution Architects, Schneider Electric

Joe Reele is Vice President, Solution Architects at Schneider Electric, responsible for bringing together the full suite of our products and services to provide complete solutions for our customers. Joe has more than 23 years of experience in strategic planning, business development, operations management, and system engineering strategies. Joe started his career with the U.S. Air Force Nuclear program and then led one of the world’s largest financial data center portfolios. Joe provides strong technical and business leadership skills with the proven ability to analyze an organization’s business requirements, identify deficiencies and potential opportunities, and develop innovative solutions to meet the customer’s business objectives. 

Data Center Frontier:  As liquid cooling shifts from pilot deployments to baseline design, what new coordination is required among equipment manufacturers, construction teams, and chemical/process experts to standardize safe, maintainable systems across global portfolios?

Joe Reele, Schneider Electric:  We see significant progress in this area as liquid cooling transitions from pilot deployments to baseline design.

Air cooling standards and thresholds are well established, and similar work is now being applied to the emerging liquid cooling space.

This shift requires new coordination among equipment manufacturers, construction teams, and chemical/process experts.

Coordination is essential to ensure systems are standardized, safe, and maintainable across global portfolios.

Data Center Frontier:  With hyperscale timelines collapsing and AI demand surging, how are owners and operators balancing speed-to-market with long-term cost of ownership, especially when power infrastructure and sustainability mandates move at different speeds?

Joe Reele, Schneider Electric: There are several approaches to balancing speed-to-market with long-term cost of ownership as hyperscale timelines compress and AI demand surges, especially when power infrastructure and sustainability mandates move at different speeds.

One effective strategy is adopting a standardized, modular approach to infrastructure that is closely coupled with IT needs.

Importantly, standardized and modular does not mean inflexible; these designs can still adapt to evolving requirements.

Data Center Frontier:  As data centers are expected to evolve into energy hubs—producing, storing, and recycling power, water, and heat—what innovations or partnerships are emerging to make these facilities active participants in grid and resource stability?

Joe Reele, Schneider Electric:  There’s a lot involved in making this work at scale, and it requires three major pillars working together:

• Policy – Regulations must align with technology and its capabilities.
• Technology – Innovations such as advanced battery chemistry, nuclear, hydrogen, and other emerging solutions.
• The Digital Thread – Seamless communication and standards connecting grid systems to end loads, whether that’s a data center, a home, or an entire city.

You can’t have a smart grid without smart cities, and you can’t have smart cities without smart homes and buildings.

All of this must operate in a safe, secure, and digitally integrated way.

We are finally functioning as an ecosystem to make this vision a reality, and progress continues.

Data Center Frontier:  AI infrastructure now demands tight choreography among diverse disciplines, i.e. power, cooling, construction, chemistry, and digital systems. How are your teams aligning design and operations data across organizational silos to deliver performance and transparency from site prep to steady-state operation?

Joe Reele, Schneider Electric:  This is a clear use case for digital twins.

The ability to create a true digital twin, from land acquisition through to an operational data center, allows us to model how the facility interacts with and responds to the grid.

This capability is increasingly becoming a requirement for large-scale, high-load data center builds.

It enables operations teams to optimize risk and cost, identify efficiencies, and test scenarios before construction begins.

Modeling and refining in the digital world provides significant advantages over discovering issues after physical deployment.

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