Unlike Anything Seen Before: How Data Center Owners Are Redefining Energy Efficiency At Scale

Data center owners today are operating in an environment where uptime is nonnegotiable, technology cycles are accelerating and energy availability is increasingly constrained. 

According to the International Energy Agency, the world’s electricity demand deriving from data centers is expected to “more than double” by 2030.

As compute densities rise and new workloads come online, ensuring reliable, efficient thermal management has become just as critical as securing power itself.  

Without the right cooling strategies, whether they be advanced air systems, liquid cooling or hybrid approaches, operators risk overheating, downtime and long-term impacts to operating costs and brand reputation.

Bisnow’s National Data Center Investment Conference and Expo, which will be held on May 12-14 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Rockville, Maryland, brings together owners, developers, investors and technology leaders to discuss how the industry is responding to unprecedented growth, power challenges and evolving design requirements.

Click here to register and purchase tickets.

Bisnow spoke with Matt Kightlinger, vice president at Johnson Controls’ York brand and a participant on the event’s Operational Excellence 2.0 panel, about what he is seeing across the market — from power constraints and cooling innovation to execution challenges that are reshaping how data centers are built and operated.

A Market Moving At Unmatched Speed

Today’s data center market is operating unlike anything seen in the history of data centers, Kightlinger said.

“The industry is evolving in real time, and the sheer speed and scale of what’s being built today is extraordinary,” he said. “The technology going into facilities today will look different just a couple of years from now, and cooling designs have to evolve alongside it.”

From York and Johnson Controls’ vantage point of supporting hyperscale and large colocation customers across North America, the biggest constraint on data center growth is on power availability rather than demand. Utilities and grid interconnections often lag behind project timelines, forcing owners to think differently about how and where they source energy.

“As soon as sites can get access to power, they’re taking it,” Kightlinger said. “In many cases, interconnections are taking so long that owners are turning to on-site power generation to keep projects moving.”

That shift has cascading impacts on thermal design. With more gas turbines, fuel cells and other sources deployed on-site, operators are increasingly looking at how waste heat can be recovered or integrated into cooling strategies to improve overall efficiency and reduce peak electrical demand, he said.

Optimizing Efficiency Through A Systems-Level Approach

For Johnson Controls and York, helping data center design engineers optimize energy efficiency starts with looking at the facility as a single system rather than a collection of standalone components. The company works closely with end users and consulting engineers to deliver the right thermal management technologies for each site, Kightlinger said. 

He said these technologies could be air-cooled or water-cooled high-efficiency chillers or applying absorption chillers in the design to take advantage of waste heat from on-site power generation. Absorption cooling in particular sharply reduces electrical demand, with chillers requiring just 20 to 25 kilowatts of electrical power per 2 megawatts of cooling, as opposed to electric chillers that need 500 kW or more for the same output, achieving a more than 90% reduction in electricity for cooling.

Different air-cooled approaches can involve using fan walls, computer room air handlers and advanced controls, he said.

Although cooling can use up 38% to 40% of power, a key differentiator is understanding how cooling equipment interacts with the electrical infrastructure, he said.

“We step back and evaluate the overall electrical architecture and how our equipment impacts peak demand,” he said. “Reducing peak power and having improvements in thermal efficiency is critical, because every kilowatt saved on cooling can be redeployed to IT load.” 

York’s long history working with large-scale HVAC, combined with Johnson Controls’ building automation, digital controls and service capabilities, enables data center owners to balance capital investment with long-term operational efficiency. This is especially important in an environment where energy costs and availability are under constant pressure, Kightlinger said.

He said Johnson Controls' solutions can reduce non-information technology energy consumption by more than 50% in most North American data center hubs through a proprietary combination of superefficient air-cooled chillers and innovative direct-to-chip designs. For a gigawatt-scale artificial intelligence factory, this reduction translates to enough energy savings to power more than 200,000 households annually.

Executing At Hyperscale: From Design To Commissioning

Kightlinger leads a sales organization that works directly with hyperscale operators and major colocation providers, supporting projects from early design through startup and commissioning. The team is engaged from end to end, supporting owners and engineers during the design and procurement phases, and then hands projects off to its project management execution, startup and service teams.

This coordination is critical in a market defined by aggressive schedules and parallel construction, he said.

“These projects move fast, and they’re complex,” Kightlinger said. “We’re supporting owners as well as general contractors, mechanical contractors and consulting engineers across multiple sites simultaneously. It takes a high level of integration and discipline to keep everything on track.”

What's Top Of Mind For The Industry

Looking ahead, Kightlinger expects several themes to dominate conversations across the industry. One is power strategy and how owners secure enough power, whether through utilities, grid upgrades or on-site generation, to support continued growth. 

Another is the shortage of skilled labor, particularly in remote markets, and how that is driving more modular and prefabricated approaches as well as high-density and capacity chillers that require only half the dry cooler supporting capability as conventional designs.

The industry also wants to know about the evolution of technology and how rising rack densities, higher operating temperatures and new cooling methodologies, including liquid cooling, are reshaping design standards, he said.

“At the end of the day, everyone is trying to understand where the industry is going next and how to build data centers today that are flexible enough to support tomorrow’s technologies,” Kightlinger said.

Click here to learn more about Bisnow’s DICE National Conference.

This article was produced in collaboration between Studio B and Johnson Controls. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.