Resilient data center power is not just vital, but highly challenging. Despite this, growth is accelerating to such an extent that some countries are trying to restrict or slow down this segment of the market.

This is forcing data center operators to either shift their focus to other jurisdictions or, says ABB’s Mario Macri – data center segment lead, Asia Pacific for smart buildings and smart power – to solve their own power generation needs. At the same time, power architecture continues to evolve rapidly alongside demand, serving to further compound the complexity faced by operators.

“Development is wholly focused on increasing rack power, while trying to allow for that future growth and flexibility,” he explains, during a recent DCD>Talk. He adds that the need to scale quickly is changing the power landscape and driving the move towards modularity and standardization – more so than ever before.

Adding to the drivers for innovation in data center design is the shift towards sustainability targets, including an increased need for transparency when it comes to factors like embodied carbon. Macri describes it as a daunting task, particularly as this is directly juxtaposed by the increasing demand for more energy and water.

“We help solve these problems: it's our advanced solutions and products that include things such as product transparency via circularity initiatives and product passports that help us support the data center operators in this enormous challenge,” he remarks, adding that this is not just about operations, but the total life and flexibility of the products ABB supplies.

Sustainability driving investment

The sustainability challenge is driving investment into new technologies. By partnering with companies like ABB it is possible to resolve many of the current and foreseeable issues. For example, this might involve direct current distribution to higher rack powers, in other words, doing more, with less.

“We see chips and hardware, and even our solutions and products, constantly challenged in a good way and constantly improving, so that that same kilowatt does far more than it used to,” says Macri.

And sustainability isn’t just about what’s best for the environment, it’s also what’s best for business. Sustainability, he says, also benefits shareholder return by improving the optics and the Capex.

“Sustainability challenges us and helps everyone to improve [their] future products,” he says, highlighting the importance of full transparency in the way products are developed, the materials used, and what this means over their total life cycle. Key to this is the use of analytics to optimize product performance, enabling reconfiguration as needed.

It’s also about the total embodied carbon over the course of the entire lifecycle of these products – including the point when there is a need to dispose of them. “It's a great challenge in our society at large, not only for our industries as we need to consider what materials are in these devices, and we need to consider how we either recycle or dispose of them, so that transparency leads to that full embodied carbon view,” he explains.

Kilowatts per rack

At the moment the most common kilowattage per rack is around 30 to 50kW. However, higher density AI workloads utilizing GPU clusters are using 80 to 100kW per rack, and it's rising quickly. “So we've seen the rack density more than double in just three to four years, and it's accelerating,” Macri reveals.

To address these challenges, modularity is increasingly becoming the default, with 40 percent of all new developments moving in this direction. The key drivers for this include speed of deployment, and the need for future flexibility, with traditional data center designs changing to embrace modules that are prefabricated off-site.

Modules manufactured externally enable easier deployment and upgradeability in the future, allowing for much needed scalability. It also means it’s possible to ‘pay-as-you-grow’ whenever there is a need to deploy new modules to embrace higher rack densities.

With a significant cost differential between designing and building everything upfront and upgrading as demand and requirements grow, modularity is not only advantageous financially, but also allows for thorough testing within a factory environment prior to deployment. This is often far more efficient than constructing an onsite plug-and-play approach.

Eliminating issues

Modularity also eliminates any commissioning issues onsite, and it allows data centers to have redundancy in the system as it begins to grow. “The N+1 is pretty essential,” says Macri, “Particularly when you're talking about racks 100 kilowatt and above.” There would be a massive impact if the power isn’t available to supply those kinds of racks, which traditionally could lead to downtime to do upgrades.

“The modular approach allows you to take a chunk at a time and permits you to have much more flexibility as you move forward,” he says. ABB’s modular busbar distribution system, for example, uses the first plug in socket system, which many data centers use in their Remote Power Panel System (RPPS).

“It allows quick deployment, quick in and out changes of the modules, making it easier when you're designing upfront, and during its life, allowing you to change those modules and to change the nature of those modules as you wish,” he explains. This means you don’t have to throw the RPP away, redesign or rebuild, reducing waste and supporting sustainability.

Innovations in protection

Going forward, innovations in protection will be essential for modern facilities as rack power densities continue to rise. Some of this already comes as a standard. For example, ultra-fast arc, flash protection. This is about detecting faults in under 1.5ms and eliminating them. There’s also digital protection and monitoring for shutting systems down immediately before an adverse event occurs.

Smart products are being used to predict failures weeks or months ahead of an adverse event, bolstering both physical safety and cybersecurity. Some power distribution components are connectable, making them potentially hackable. Therefore, ensuring these components are cyber-secure with products such as ABB’s EMAX 3 provides an extra layer of protection.

As for Macri’s predictions, he foresees the segment reaching 120GW globally, and believes there will be rack densities of more than 150kW at the bleeding edge, with predictive maintenance increasingly playing a role in supporting uptime and maximizing ROI. As for the hyperscalers, the 1MW rack is already on its way.

Check out the full DCD>Talk with ABB’s Mario Macri here.