F E A T U R E current usage – it would be like adding another country ’ s worth of power use .

Data centre experts predict a need for 18 – 30GW of new capacity over the next five to seven years in the US alone to handle the growing demand , and our current infrastructure is not ready to handle this surge . AI-powered chips put out a lot of heat and require a lot of power to run , so if data centres do not begin updating and changing their processes and internal hardware , they will further strain the US ’ s aging power grid .

To their credit , tech companies have attempted to counteract their energy and water usage by heavily investing in renewable energy sources . Companies have tried to help their consumption through Power Purchase Agreements with solar or wind farm operators , or by purchasing renewable energy certificates that allow power companies to pay for the creation of renewable energy .

Unfortunately , data centres cannot entirely rely on renewable energy resources – data centres require a consistent power source to stay running , something renewable energy cannot provide . However , there is hope for the future with the possibility of nuclear or geothermal energy sources , although neither is currently commercially available . Even if we generate enough power , upgrading transmission and distribution systems remains a significant challenge . too much power in data centres and are not , and will not be , sustainable – using as much water as three average-sized hospitals for cooling and computing needs .

As data centres grow in size , computing power and numbers , the top two concerns are the sharp increase in water and electricity usage – both of which can be aided by the switch to liquid cooling solutions .

Data centres have previously relied on standard air-cooling , however , this method is not sustainable and is no longer enough to cool the heat produced by AI chips and servers .

This necessitates the shift to better cooling technology that directly applies the cooling solution to each chip .

The biggest issue with previous solutions is that they are using a less efficient means of removing heat ( liquid is 6x better at removing heat than air ) and using brute force to remove heat from the server and rack as a whole versus targeting the source of heat – the chips .

By successfully cooling the chips , data centres can keep running efficiently without the fear of outages while optimising every watt of power and litre of water used . Data centre operators can implement Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling to easily target the chips and keep them cool before heat is emitted to the rest of the server and server rack . This necessary shift to Direct-to-Chip liquid cooling allows data centres to free nearly 20 % of the energy used for cooling – leaving the other 20 % previously used for computing needs .

Data centres must make crucial changes toward sustainability and this responsibility falls directly on the operators . Operators must build and maintain efficient and sustainable data centres and practices . As power becomes the containing resource , they must ensure that every watt is efficiently allocated to compute – not cooling .

The inevitable increase in data centres has operators looking at alternate cooling solutions . With Google revealing that their data centre water consumption was nearly 4.5 billion gallons in 2021 , and almost half of current data centre power going towards cooling , data centre shifts are becoming more and more necessary .

The previous air-cooling methods are no longer enough . These solutions take up

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