Top 10 Trends of Data Center Facility 2024 White Paper

Overview

The trends cover high-reliability products, distributed cooling architecture, predictive maintenance, active safety, prefabricated modular construction, simplified O&M, air/liquid convergence, indirect evaporative cooling, efficient power links and AI energy optimisation. Uptime Institute 2023 attributes 19 % of data-centre accidents and outages to cooling systems. Rack power is expected to rise from 6-8 kW to 30-40 kW as intelligent computing grows.

The fault speeds are the most concrete part of the document. Lithium battery thermal runaway goes from trigger temperature T2 (150-250 C) to peak T3 (generally 500 C or less) in only 30-60 s. For a 30 kW cabinet with cold-plate plus air cooling, the emergency response time after a secondary-pipe fault is only 30 s to 1 min.

For hall design the paper expects mixed halls of racks at 15 kW or less and 30 kW or more, while about 90 % of new data centres remain at 15 kW or less and air-cooled. Indirect evaporative cooling is cited at about 20 % lower overall cost than chilled water. Prefabricated modular construction cuts a project from about 24 to about 10 months (time to market about 50 % shorter). A high-efficiency UPS mode reaches 99.1 % conversion, and a measured site PUE of 1.298 is reported at 30 % of design load.

Key points

1. Uptime Institute 2023: cooling systems cause 19 % of data-centre accidents/outages.
2. Rack power expected to rise from 6-8 kW to 30-40 kW.
3. Lithium battery thermal runaway goes from T2 (150-250 C) to T3 (generally <= 500 C) in 30-60 s.
4. 30 kW cold-plate plus air cabinet: only 30 s to 1 min to respond after a secondary-pipe fault.
5. Prefabricated modular construction cuts a project from about 24 to about 10 months.
6. Mixed halls of <= 15 kW and >= 30 kW racks expected; about 90 % of new DCs still <= 15 kW air-cooled.
7. Indirect evaporative cooling cited at about 20 % lower overall cost than chilled water.
8. High-efficiency UPS mode 99.1 %; measured site PUE 1.298 at 30 % of design load.

Using it in design

• For lithium BESS/UPS rooms, require detection and segregation sized for a 30-60 s runaway escalation.
• For liquid-cooled racks, require ride-through or redundant secondary loops given the 30-60 s response window.
• Support mixed-density zones (<= 15 kW air, >= 30 kW liquid) and an adjustable air/liquid ratio in hall planning.
• In the schedule model, compare prefab and stick-built durations.

Who should read it

Designers and operations managers sizing fire, cooling-failure and maintenance-safety risk in high-density halls.

Related standards

• IEC 62619
• NFPA 855

Publication details

Authors

Huawei Digital Power

Publisher

Huawei Digital Power

Year

2024

Document language

English

Source type

Manufacturer

Access

Free to read

Licence

Copyright retained; citation only — the publisher’s terms apply to the original document

Citation