Red Hot Data Center Growth Needs Smart Innovation to Stay Cool

The rapid growth of data center construction, fueled by an almost insatiable appetite for artificial intelligence, has been a boon for the US economy with JP Morgan forecasting that AI alone will  increase GDP by 20 basis points in the next twelve months. The US Department of Energy estimates that power used by data centers accounted for 4.4% of total national energy consumption in 2023, and by 2028 as much as 12%. That growth will put an enormous strain on power grids across the country.

A significant driver of any data center’s energy usage is the cooling demand for its chips which operate at temperatures < 77º. The energy required to maintain these temperatures can overload regional energy grids, particularly during a heat wave resulting in a power failure. While this situation might be manageable in some business sectors, it is untenable for the mission-critical services of data centers.

For this reason, data centers operators have engineered and deployed redundancies ranging from Tier 1 designs with minimal to no redundancies all the way up to Tier 5 configurations, which rely on extensive backup systems to maintain systems staying online during power or equipment failures. However, with rising energy costs, new chips that require more cooling and the increase in ambient temperatures, even these redundancies are inadequate over time to insulate data centers from the risk of overheating and overloading the power grid.

Fortunately, innovations have recently emerged in HVAC technology that offer cost-effective, efficient solutions to alleviate the strain that data centers are placing on our power grid.

One example of recent innovations is the development of heat transfer fluids that allow water-to-air-based cooling systems to operate more efficiently while lowering their overall energy consumption. These fluids reduce maintenance costs and increase thermal capacity, all without any major changes to existing infrastructure. One such example is Maxwell®, a heat transfer fluid manufactured by HT Materials Science (HTMS) that uses submicron particles of aluminum oxide to increase the thermal capacity of primary cooling systems by up to 15%. Maxwell® has been successfully deployed at over 30 locations by such companies as Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, Ericsson, Regeneron, Swire Properties and Aramco. HTMS is also developing in partnership with EcoLab Nalco innovative heat transfer fluids for direct to chip (DTC) and immersion cooling applications.

While the massive growth of AI has given rise to the aforementioned challenges, it can also play a key role in navigating solutions. For example, AI-optimized HVAC systems can analyze operating conditions in real time, anticipate potential problems and adjust cooling loads before any overheating occurs.

In addition to these advanced technologies, more traditional HVAC components that also improve efficiency include variable-speed fans, free cooling coils that use ambient air in cooler weather to cool the system, and high-efficiency pumps that optimize airflow and cooling distribution so that energy is only directed where and when it’s needed. Together these technologies offer a cost-effective way for older HVAC systems to be retrofitted and achieve greater performance without a full scale overhaul of the existing system.

While the expansion of AI has opened up a realm of seemingly limitless possibilities in the digital world, data centers are in fact limited by the constraints of our energy supply infrastructure. Now is the time for data centers to direct the spirit of innovation that has fueled the development of AI toward embracing new cooling system technologies that create more energy capacity for data centers to thrive.