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Power Supply ENERGY

THE FUTURE OF DATA CENTERS

Looking to the future of data centers, it is likely that as server power demand exceeds 30 kW,
forced-air cooling will no longer be sufficient to maintain a safe operating temperature. The next

steps are varied approaches to liquid cooling, which take advantage of the superior thermal transfer
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properties of liquids relative to air. Most typically today, this means direct-to-plate techniques,
but on the horizon is immersion cooling, in which server components are submerged in a non-
conductive fluid. Advanced Energy is already working on power supplies that readily adapt to liquid
cooling, enabling it to be used in immersion-cooling platforms.

On the power distribution side, continued increase in overall demand will ultimately lead to DC
schema. The likely transition is at 400 V, as direct current at that level eliminates requirements for
a power-factor–correction stage and thus achieves up to 99% efficiency.

There’s no doubt that this greater efficiency will be required as data centers continue to grow
in both individual size and the number of installations. Data centers and cloud services form
the backbone of a digital lifestyle that is seeing the amounts of data generated worldwide grow
exponentially. And with the adoption of IoT devices projected to contribute to an explosion of data,
from 18.3 ZB in 2019 to 73.1 ZB in 2025 — an almost-fourfold increase — data centers will continue
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to play a critical role in the digital economy. Advanced Energy is a key contributor of this growth,

powering the data center’s hardest challenges with highly efficient, high-performing power supply
solutions.

Climate Change
For More Information

Solutions
▶ Data Centers & the Environment 2021 - Report on the State of the Green Data
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Center
By Glenn Weinreb, director of the Manhattan 2 Project

▶ Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) Annual Energy Outlook 2021 report projects
▶ Set your strategy to get the right liquid-cooled data center U.S. CO emissions from all energy sources to remain approximately constant over the next 30
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2
years, as shown in Figure 1. In other words, according to the U.S. government, the U.S. is not
reducing CO emissions toward zero. This is based on current government policy and the fact that
▶ IoT Growth Demands Rethink of Long-Term Storage Strategies, says IDC 2
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consumers buy the lowest-cost solution. Other countries are similar.

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