Cooling

Vertiv introduces new cooling chillers for data centres

Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, has announced the introduction of the high-capacity models of its Vertiv Liebert AFC inverter screw chiller range with low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerant. Available in the EMEA region, the new models provide up to 2.2 MW of cooling capacity in a single frame, resulting in a smaller carbon emission footprint, requiring fewer units to be installed for capacity, and reducing installation and maintenance time and costs for data centre operators. The newest Liebert AFC models are high-density, outdoor, free cooling chillers that reportedly provide the industry’s highest capacity in a single frame. These future-ready chillers enable hybrid operation for data centres deploying AI and HPC liquid cooling applications and are compliant with current regulatory requirements in the EU. The chiller is an integral part of the overall Vertiv solution to simplify data centre deployment and management. By pairing the Liebert AFC chillers with chilled water solutions - such as Vertiv Liebert PCW perimeter air handler system, Vertiv Liebert XDU coolant distribution unit, Vertiv Liebert CWA thermal wall system, and Vertiv Liebert iCOM CWM smart control - operators can efficiently address the cooling needs of colocation and cloud data centre applications. "As the demand for AI and HPC deployments grows, customers are increasingly seeking solutions that provide higher cooling capacity within a compact footprint," states George Hannah, Senior Global Director for Chilled Water Systems at Vertiv. "The latest Liebert AFC low-GWP chillers reach up to 2.2 MW, in a form factor that significantly reduces the time, cost, and complexity of deploying these systems. This solution supports Vertiv's commitment to environmental responsibility and compliance with the latest regulatory standards, and aligns with the company's objectives to continue its industry-leading expertise in air and liquid cooling applications." Vertiv Liebert AFC offers up to 20% lower annual energy consumption compared to fixed screw solutions. The inverter-driven compressor allows for the reduction of energy consumption and, in particular, the electrical power required during peaks, which in turn allows more power availability for the IT equipment. The innovative regulation algorithms offer accurate control of the fluid delivery temperature to the indoor units, enhancing cooling continuity and reliability. The unit is designed to operate with a more eco-friendly refrigerant R1234ze HFO, which allows data centre owners to comply with the EU F-Gas Regulation 2024/573 and enables customers to support pressing sustainability goals. For more from Vertiv, click here.

Lenovo expands Neptune liquid cooling ecosystem

Lenovo has expanded its Neptune liquid-cooling technology to more servers with new ThinkSystem V4 designs that help businesses boost intelligence, consolidate IT and lower power consumption in the new era of AI. Powered by Intel Xeon 6 processors with P-cores, the new Lenovo ThinkSystem SC750 V4 supercomputing infrastructure (pictured above) combines peak performance with advanced efficiency to deliver faster insights in a space-optimised design for intensive HPC workloads. The full portfolio includes new Intel-based solutions optimised for rack density and massive transactional data, maximising processing performance in the data centre space for HPC and AI workloads. “Lenovo is helping enterprises of every size and across every industry bring new AI use cases to life based on improvements in real-time computing, power efficiency and ease of deployment,” says Scott Tease, Vice President and General Manager of High-Performance Computing and AI at Lenovo. “The new Lenovo ThinkSystem V4 solutions powered by Intel will transform business intelligence and analytics by delivering AI-level compute in a smaller footprint that consumes less energy.”As part of its ongoing investment in accelerating AI, Lenovo is pushing the envelope with the sixth generation of its Lenovo Neptune liquid-cooling technology, delivering it for mainstream use throughout its ThinkSystem V3 and V4 portfolios through compact design innovations that maximise computing performance while consuming less energy. Lenovo’s proprietary direct water-cooling recycles loops of warm water to cool data centre systems, enabling up to a 40% reduction in power consumption.The Lenovo ThinkSystem SC750 V4 helps support customers’ sustainability goals data centre operations with highly efficient direct water-cooling built directly into the solution and accelerators that deliver even greater workload efficiency with exceptional performance per watt. Engineered for space-optimised computing, the infrastructure fits within less than a square meter of data centre space in industry-standard 19-inch racks, pushing the boundaries of compact general-purpose supercomputing. Leveraging the new infrastructure, organisations can achieve faster time-to-value by quickly and securely unlocking new insights from their data. The ThinkSystem SC750 V4 uses a next-generation MRDIMM memory solution to increase critical memory bandwidth by up to 40%. It is also designed for handling sensitive workloads with enhanced security features for greater protection. Building on Lenovo’s leadership in AI innovation, the new solutions achieve advanced performance, increased reliability and higher density to propel intelligence. For more from Lenovo, click here.

Park Place Technologies introduces liquid cooling solutions

Park Place Technologies, a global data centre and networking optimisation firm, has announced the expansion of its portfolio of IT infrastructure services with the introduction of two liquid cooling solutions for data centres: immersion liquid cooling and direct-to-chip cooling. This announcement comes at a critical time for businesses who are seeing a dramatic increase in the compute power they require, driven by adoption of technologies like AI and IoT. This, in turn, is driving the need for more on-prem hardware, more space for that hardware, and more energy to run it all – presenting a significant financial and environmental challenge for businesses. Park Place Technology says that its new liquid cooling solutions present a strong solution for businesses looking to address these challenges, as the technology has the potential to deliver strong financial and environmental results. Direct-to-chip is an advanced cooling method that applies coolant directly to the server components that generate the most heat including CPUs and GPUs. Immersion cooling empowers data centre operators to do more with less: less space and less energy. Using these methods, businesses can increase their Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) by up to 18 times, and rack density by up to 10 times. Ultimately, this can help deliver power savings of up to 50%, which in turn leads to lower operation costs. From an environmental perspective, liquid cooling is significantly more efficient than traditional air cooling. At present, air cooling technology only captures 30% of the heat generated by the servers, compared to the 100% captured by immersion cooling, resulting in lower carbon emissions for businesses that opt for immersion cooling methods. Park Place Technologies can deliver a complete turnkey solution for organisations looking to implement liquid cooling technology, removing the complexity of adoption, which is a common barrier for businesses. Park Place Technologies provides a single-vendor solution for the whole process from procuring the hardware, conversion of the servers for liquid cooling, installation, maintenance, monitoring and management of the hardware and the cooling technology. “Our new liquid cooling offerings have the potential to have a significant impact on our customers’ costs and carbon emissions, two of the key issues they face today,” says Chris Carreiro, Chief Technology Officer at Park Place Technologies. “Park Place Technologies is ideally positioned to help organisations cut their data centre operations costs, giving them the opportunity to re-invest in driving innovation across their businesses. “The decision to invest in immersion cooling and direct-to-chip cooling depends on various factors, including the specific requirements of the data centre, budget constraints, the desired level of cooling efficiency, and infrastructure complexity. Park Place Technologies can work closely with customers to find the best solution for their business, and can guide them towards the best long-term strategy, while offering short-term results. This takes much of the complexity out of the process, which will enable more businesses to capitalise on this exciting new technology.”

STT GDC and Phaidra to optimise data centre cooling with AI

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC), one of the world’s fastest-growing data centre colocation services providers, today announced its collaboration with Phaidra, a pioneer of using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve efficiency, stability, and sustainability, to pilot an AI-based autonomous control system for optimising data centre cooling in STT GDC’s facilities in Singapore. Phaidra provides AI-powered control systems for data centres. Its autonomous AI agents build upon legacy control systems and support facility operations teams by analysing thousands of sensor trends in real-time to maximise energy efficiency, reliability, and cooling performance using specialised deep learning models. Because this is a closed-loop solution, these AI agents continuously learn and adapt to changing facility conditions, such as load variations, due to higher density GPU deployments or external weather changes. STT GDC’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030, along with its collaboration with Phaidra, aligns with Singapore’s vision of a greener future for the data centre industry. As the power needs of AI workloads continue to grow, data centre cooling and operational infrastructure must evolve to keep pace. This evolution is essential to more effectively and sustainably manage the heat generated by the high-performance computing requirements necessary to support accelerated computing workloads such as AI and beyond. STT GDC will be the first operator to pilot Phaidra’s AI-powered control systems in Asia, setting a unique precedent by testing them in a hybrid cooling environment that is technically more challenging as compared to traditional air-cooled data centres. Selected STT GDC data centres offer a combination of both air-cooling and liquid-cooling solutions, supporting diverse computing workloads within the same facility. This pioneering effort underscores STT GDC’s commitment to innovative and sustainable data centre management. Based on existing site parameters, an initial estimate of 10% in cooling energy savings is anticipated. As the AI model is fed more operational data, energy savings are expected to increase from the 10% baseline to as high as 30%. This flagship pilot will serve as a model for possible subsequent deployments across STT GDC’s portfolio of data centres globally. Daniel Pointon, Group Chief Technology Officer, ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, comments, “Combining our expertise in delivering AI-ready data centres across major economic hubs with Phaidra’s industry-leading know-how in using AI to optimise mission-critical control systems, we are leading the way in using AI to further drive sustainability within our data centres. Through this collaboration, we are not only seeing meaningful impact on our ongoing decarbonisation efforts, but also significant efficiency gains in data centre operations that already offer a hybrid of both air and liquid cooling. This pilot is testament to our commitment to drive sustainable innovation across our data centres.” Jim Gao, CEO and Co-Founder of Phaidra, adds, “Phaidra is proud to work with a leading data centre services provider like STT GDC. Its culture of operational excellence, relentless improvement and innovation makes for a natural partnership. We look forward to driving the data centre industry forward together.” AI is already making inroads towards transforming the global economy. Analysis from PWC indicates that AI could potentially contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, along with up to 26% boost in GDP for local economies from AI by the same year. While a sufficient level of AI-readiness is required to take advantage of these economic opportunities, there also must be considerations towards doing so in a sustainable manner. As a leading data centre hub both regionally and internationally, Singapore is uniquely positioned to drive sustainable innovation in the data centre space. Recently, Singapore announced its Green Data Centre Roadmap for sustainable growth, with plans to accelerate data centres’ energy efficiency at both hardware and software levels, as well as to increase data centres’ use of green energy to expand capacity. For more from STT GDC, click here.

BAC unveils Loop Platform for enhanced cooling

Baltimore Aircoil Company (BAC), a global provider of cooling equipment, has announced the launch of its innovative AI-driven Loop Platform. BAC claims that the platform, which is designed to enhance the efficiency and performance of HVAC systems, marks a significant advancement in cooling systems management. Loop is an advanced AI platform that seamlessly integrates with existing cooling tower systems. This compact yet powerful device is engineered to optimise operational efficiency by continuously monitoring and adjusting for environmental conditions. Its AI algorithms analyse data in real-time, ensure optimal performance and enable predictive maintenance. The result is significant energy savings, reduced maintenance costs, and extended equipment lifespan. This platform is tailored for end users, including building and facility owners, managers, and maintenance professionals. The Loop Platform is designed to operate as an easy-to-use solution that not only improves system reliability, but also contributes to sustainability goals by reducing energy consumption. Maintenance professionals will appreciate the platform's ability to predict potential issues before they escalate, streamlining maintenance schedules and minimising unexpected downtime. "BAC is excited to introduce the Loop Platform, a product that embodies our commitment to innovation and sustainability," says Adam Bee, Vice President of Business Development at Baltimore Aircoil Company. "We understand the challenges faced by building owners and facility managers in maintaining efficient cooling systems. Loop offers a smart, user-friendly solution that simplifies these tasks while delivering measurable savings." For more from BAC, click here.

SINES DC becomes Europe's largest data centre campus

Start Campus, a company focused on designing, building and operating a new generation of sustainable data centres, has announced the award of additional power by REN, the Portuguese transmission system operator. This expanded power allocation brings the total IT capacity secured for SINES DC to 1.2 GW, an increase on the initial 495 MW, making it the largest colocation site in Europe with fully secured grid power. SINES DC, which has land secured for the full campus, uses seawater cooling to minimise its environmental impact and improve efficiency. This unique offering enables Start Campus to deliver large scale, AI-ready and sustainable data centre solutions. The campus, located south of Lisbon and comprising six buildings (SIN01-06), will be developed incrementally until 2030: • SIN01: the first building with an initial 14 MW of IT capacity is set to be operational by Q4 2024. In direct response to the requirements of its customers and, through the use of liquid cooling technologies, its capacity is being expanded to 26 MW. • SIN02-06: each subsequent building will support up to 240 MW of IT capacity and will be constructed sequentially, with SIN02 ready for service from 2026. All buildings are expected to be operational by 2030. Rob Dunn, Chief Executive Officer of Start Campus, says, “Securing this additional grid capacity marks a significant milestone for Start Campus. The scale of SINES DC, coupled with our unique seawater cooling solution, creates an unprecedented offering that sets new standards for the industry. I am proud to deliver a solution that sustainably meets the evolving needs of our customers.” This power allocation follows the commitment by REN to make significant investments to extend and develop the transmission network in the high-demand area of Sines. Throughout its phased development, Start Campus continues to support the development of the Sines region and will contribute to renewable energy developments in Portugal. For more from Start Campus, click here.

BAC secures rights to DUG's immersion cooling technology

Baltimore Aircoil Company (BAC), a provider of data centre cooling solutions, has announced an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with DUG Technology. This strategic partnership grants BAC exclusive rights to DUG's proven and patented immersion-cooling technology designed for high-density data centres. BAC tells us that the needs of its data centre customers are rapidly changing, and that cooling technologies are evolving to handle the increased heat loads associated with AI and machine learning. Cooling challenges include the need for more power, more floor space, increased cooling equipment complexity, and higher operating costs. DUG’s innovative solution allows data centre operators to achieve higher compute densities at world-class energy efficiency levels within the same space. This development is thus able to transform data centre infrastructure designs with lower energy usage and carbon impact. By integrating DUG's immersion-cooling technology, BAC expands its portfolio of evaporative, hybrid, and dry cooling products to include indoor immersion cooling solutions to provide data centre customers with even more advanced options to meet their future cooling needs. "This partnership with DUG represents a significant milestone for BAC," says Don Fetzer, President of BAC. "By incorporating DUG's advanced immersion-cooling technology, we are taking a major step forward in providing sustainable, next-generation cooling solutions for data centres. Our combined expertise along with our global manufacturing footprint ensures that we continue to lead the way in addressing the challenges of high-density computing, in line with our vision of reinventing cooling to sustain the world." Matt Lamont, DUG's Managing Director, adds, "This new partnership between BAC and DUG is poised to revolutionise the data centre cooling market. Our patented DUG Cool design has been refined through production use for over a decade. Our Skybox data centre in Houston is among the largest single-phase immersion-cooling deployments in the world. This agreement will pair our design, know-how, and reputation with BAC's scale, manufacturing prowess, and respected brand to position us to take advantage of a shifting and rapidly expanding data centre cooling market. We very much look forward to working with BAC as part of this agreement."

Aggreko invests in cooling fleet to support data centres

Energy solutions specialist, Aggreko, has significantly invested in its European fleet of cooling solutions to bring reliable, clean and efficient cooling to the market. As weather forecasts predict warmer than normal temperatures for the continent this summer, companies across Europe will require HVAC solutions to maintain operations on site while keeping energy consumption to a minimum. Specifically, Aggreko has grown its fleet of chillers to support data centres with the most efficient short and long-term solutions to maintain critical operations, assist during emergency scenarios and support with increasing capacity. Growing its expertise in HVAC, the company is expanding its fleet to make greener cooling provision both for production processes and cooling applications. Complementing its existing range of industrial HVAC solutions and wider Greener Upgrades portfolio, Aggreko is introducing two new cooling product ranges. Its new very low temperature chiller, the VLTC550, uses CO2 (R774) refrigerant with a global warming potential (GWP) equal to one, and provides stable and exceptionally efficient cooling. The containerised unit is capable of achieving 220 kW of cooling at -40°C in a condensed 10ft footprint. As companies are under pressure to use low GWP refrigerants, Aggreko is able to help companies accelerate the transition with this new fleet. To further support the transition to more environmentally friendly refrigerants, the company is switching all screw chillers in its fleet to R513A, significantly reducing the GWP of Aggreko’s fleet of industrial chillers by almost 60%. For larger scale cooling requirements, Aggreko has also introduced a new range of water-cooled chillers which delivers 1.5 MW of cooling and uses R513A refrigerant. Designed to meet the needs of data centres, manufacturing, petrochemicals, food and beverage, and mining sectors, the modular and scalable water-cooling solution provides advanced control capabilities to ensure optimal performance and efficiency. Danny Quinn, Head of HVAC and Compressed Air Product Lines at Aggreko, comments, “Supplementary cooling solutions are important for any data centre operators looking to maintain smooth operations while balancing cost and environmental impact. We have invested in our European fleet of temperature control equipment so that we can provide the most efficient solutions that meet all regulatory requirements for customers, which can be implemented quickly on their site. Our expert teams can ensure the correct level of equipment is selected, with no project too complex.” Further enhancing the environmental credentials of its cooling solutions, Aggreko has also recently invested significantly in its portfolio of Greener Upgrades to efficiently and sustainably power the chillers. This includes incorporating Stage V generators, greener fuels and Battery Energy Storage Systems to enhance efficiency, reduce fuel use and carbon footprint. By investing in its Greener Upgrades, Aggreko is aiming to make efficient and clean technologies more accessible to customers, in addition to the skills and expertise required to correctly implement them – a fundamental part of the company’s sustainability framework, Energising Change. By providing turnkey cooling solutions, Aggreko can ensure that customers across Europe are able to prioritise resilience and uptime on site while keeping operational costs under control and emissions to a minimum. Danny adds, “Ensuring our customers can make progress with their sustainability strategies while balancing costs and resilience is something we remain committed to. As we come into key seasons for temperature control, we are making sure we are equipped with a strong fleet and the right people to implement solutions to make this a reality.” For more from Aggreko, click here.

Aruba activates liquid cooling in Ponte San Pietro data centre

Aruba, an Italian provider of cloud and data centre services, has announced the implementation of liquid cooling within the data centre campus in Ponte San Pietro (BG), near Milan. Liquid cooling enables the support of increasingly dense racks in data centres and meets the needs of new generations of processors. This type of technology is intended to support specialised hardware of public and private customers with specific needs in AI or high-performance computing (HPC); applications that require high processing intensity. “By establishing one of the first spaces equipped to accommodate liquid-cooled cabinets, Aruba is one of few industry players ready to provide the next generation of machines designed for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing," comments Giancarlo Giacomello, Head of Data Centre Offering. “This type of solution responds to the growing needs of the market that require an increase in computing density and power, offering full compatibility with next-generation systems. Integrating liquid cooling solutions into our infrastructures is part of Aruba's innovation strategy, based on the desire to explore and support all initiatives that allow us to offer customers the highest quality, performance and environmentally sustainable solutions. To do so, we design and maintain our data centres at the forefront of technology, ready to face future challenges.” Strengths of liquid cooling include:• Higher thermal efficiency: liquids have a higher heat transfer capacity than air, allowing adequate thermal dissipation for each rack even above certain density thresholds.• Energy efficiency: in high-density infrastructure, this type of cooling proves more efficient than traditional air systems.• Higher computing density: liquid cooling supports processors and GPUs with high thermal requirements and can handle higher power densities. Thanks to the design of Aruba's data centres, the liquid cooling solution was integrated into an environment already in production without needing to dedicate a separate space or portion of the facilities to liquid cooling. This greatly reduced implementation time since all data rooms had already been prepared for applications involving liquid-based heat exchange. For more from Aruba, click here.

STULZ opens Centre of Excellence in Dubai

STULZ, a manufacturer of energy efficient air conditioning solutions for data centres and mission critical applications, has announced the opening of its new Centre of Excellence (COE) in Dubai. Located in the Silicon Oasis in Dubai Digital Park, the Centre of Excellence will enable STULZ to further expand its presence across the EMEA region, building on its reputation as a pioneer in the provision of efficient and reliable climate control solutions for data centres, commercial and industrial applications. The EMEA region is of vital importance to the global data centre industry, driven by its strategic location, growing digital economy and substantial investments in infrastructure and technology. STULZ has assembled a team of company experts to operate its Centre of Excellence, headed by Karim Ait Younes, Head of Sales EMEA. He is joined by Olaf Kempcke as Senior Key Account Manager MEA, Joe Thomas as Key Account Technical Sales Manager Europe and Marcus Jänsch as Operational Manager of the EMEA COE. A solution architecture team in India, led by Sanjay Jadhav and assisted by Anand Babadi, will support the COE in providing consulting services for the complete STULZ product range, serving commercial and industrial clients for the Middle East and Africa. "The creation of our COE in Dubai is an important next step in strengthening our sales organisation in the EMEA region and allows us to advise and support our customers even more intensively,’ explains Ait Younes. ‘Being strategically located in close proximity to consultants and planners across the region enables us to be directly involved with their projects and, in turn, develop the best possible solution for them." "For large commercial and industrial brown field and green field projects, STULZ will be a key enabler for introduction of technologically advanced solutions that not only reduce energy consumption and carbon footprints, but also offer a rapid return on investment," adds Suresh Balakrishnan, Managing Director of STULZ India. The Center of Excellence will offer a comprehensive range of services including pre-sales support, expert advice on project planning, as well as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) design, performance and analysis. Marcus Jänsch commens, "As a leading manufacturer, we can provide vital advice and support, from the initial concept to the implementation of complex air conditioning solutions for data centres and other commercial/industrial applications. I’m looking forward to creating more successful and productive collaborations with consultants, planners and customers from across EMEA." To further celebrate the opening of its Centre of Excellence, STULZ will attend this year’s GITEX Global in Dubai. "STULZ has grown significantly over the past 75 years, establishing a global network of over 150 subsidiaries and partners," says Karim Ait Younes. "Our commitment to innovation has been a cornerstone of our success, and the new Centre of Excellence is proof of that. I’m very much looking forward to GITEX Global, where visitors can speak to our team of experts”. For more from STULZ, click here.