Datacenter Liquid Cooling Market Characterization

A significant increase in datacenters is anticipated in the coming decade due to the rise of AI, machine learning and cloud computing. In California, PG&E estimates that in its territory alone 3.5 GW of datacenter capacity will be added in the next 5 years, adding huge demands on the grid. Datacenters are very energy intensive, in large part because they are typically cooled with outdated, inefficient methods. Air-cooling using computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units accounts for roughly 33-40% of all electrical energy consumed by traditional datacenters. There is an opportunity to reduce datacenter energy consumption by 20% using liquid cooling strategies to target the compute chips rather than the entire building they occupy. A variety of liquid cooling technologies are available in the market such as single- and two-phase immersion cooling, single and two-phase direct liquid cooling and hybrid strategies that include liquid and air cooling. Due to the different varieties of liquid cooling technologies, market adoption of these technologies would benefit from a comprehensive categorization and enumeration of the different options, along with their relative advantages and disadvantages.   To better understand which promising technologies the efficiency programs could accelerate and what the barriers to adoption are, a study of various liquid cooling methods for cooling datacenters will be conducted. The information gathered in the survey will be both quantitative and qualitative. Analysis will be performed on the promising technologies including energy use reduction for achieving the same case temperature of the electronics component. Other factors to be considered are water use, opportunities for waste heat recovery, and preliminary cost comparisons. Qualitative information will include aspects such as ease of retrofitting traditional air-cooled datacenters, space constraints, power requirements, and environmental impact of the technology. Reliability information pertaining to the cooling technologies available on the market will also be documented.  This market characterization project will identify promising technologies for next step emerging technology studies to support new efficiency measures for custom and deemed efficiency programs.