Leading partners join forces with Equinix to test sustainable data centre innovations

Author: Carly Weller

Equinix has announced the opening of its first Co-Innovation Facility (CIF), located in its DC15 International Business Exchange (IBX) data centre at the Equinix Ashburn Campus in the Washington, D.C. area.

A component of Equinix’s Data Centre of the Future initiative, the CIF is a new capability that enables partners to work with Equinix on trialling and developing innovations. These innovations, such as identifying a path to clean hydrogen-enabled fuel cells or deploying more capable battery solutions, will be used to help define the future of sustainable digital infrastructure and services globally.

Sustainable innovations, including liquid cooling, high-density cooling, intelligent power management and on-site prime power generation, will be incubated in the CIF in partnership with leading data centre technology innovators including Bloom Energy, ZutaCore, Virtual Power Systems (VPS) and Natron. In collaboration with Equinix, these partners will test core and edge technologies with a focus on proving reliability, efficiency and cost to build. These include:

• Generator-less and UPS-less Data Centres (Bloom Energy) – utilising on-site solid oxide fuel cells enables the data centre to generate redundant cleaner energy on-grid, and potentially eliminates the need for fossil fuel-powered generators and power-consuming Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems.
• High-Density Liquid Cooling (ZutaCore) – highly efficient, direct-on-chip, waterless, two-phase liquid cooled rack systems, capable of cooling upwards of 100kW per rack in a light, compact design. Eliminates risk of IT meltdown, minimises use of scarce resources including energy, land, construction and water, and dramatically shrinks the data centre footprint.
• Software-Defined Power (VPS) with cabinet-mounted Battery Energy Storage (Natron Energy) – cabinet power management and battery energy storage system manages power draw and minimises power stranding to near zero per cent, leading to a potential 30-50% improvement of power efficiency.

“ZutaCore is honoured to be featured at the CIF and partner with Equinix to advance the proliferation of liquid cooling on a global scale,” says Udi Paret, President of ZutaCore.  

“Together we aim to prove that liquid cooling is an essential technology in realising fundamental business objectives for data centres of today and into the future. HyperCool liquid cooling solutions deliver unparalleled performance and sustainability benefits to directly address sustainability imperatives. With little to no infrastructure change, it consistently provides easy to deploy and maintain, environmentally friendly, economically attractive liquid cooling to support the highest core-count, high power and most dense requirements for a range of customer needs from the cloud to the edge.”