Daikin Industries has acquired Dynamic Data Centers Solutions (DDC Solutions), a San Diego-based company in the US specialising in cooling systems for AI data centres.
This acquisition will be conducted through Daikin’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Daikin Applied Americas (DAA), headquartered in Minneapolis.
It marks a significant entry for Daikin into the field of AI data centre solutions.
DDC Solution’s cooling technologies include server rack-level individual air-conditioning. Daikin will integrate DDC Solutions’ individual server cooling technologies into DAA’s existing portfolio of large-scale commercial air-conditioning equipment, instrumentation and controls.
These cooling technologies address the challenges associated with increased electricity consumption and heat generation in servers and peripherals resulting from growing data processing demands.
Additionally, the company’s proprietary equipment management system provides real-time analysis and automatic control of fluctuating power consumption and heat generation at the rack level.
By learning operational data for optimal control, DDC offers enhanced tech for better energy efficiency management in data centres.
Need to develop data centre cooling technology
According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) special report Energy and AI from earlier this year, electricity demand from data centres worldwide is set to more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours (TWh), slightly more than the entire electricity consumption of Japan today.
AI will be the biggest driver of this increase, with electricity demand from AI-optimised data centres forecast to more than quadruple by 2030.
In the US, power consumption by data centres is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030. Driven by AI use, the US economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals.
In other advanced economies, data centres are projected to drive more than 20 percent of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030.
For Australia, estimates vary, but analysts indicate that there are 250 data centres spread across the country and a further 175 predicted to be needed by 2030, placing Australia among the world’s top five data centre hubs.
It is estimated that data centres in Australia consume around five percent of the electricity generated nationally, with that figure set to climb to between eight and 15 percent by 2030.
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