The Cloud in Your Basement: How Cooling Tech Will Reshape Data Centres

Technology has always been the world’s biggest disruptor so it’s fitting that the biggest disruptor to tech is … tech. Less than a decade after AirTrunk built its first hyperscale data centre in Australia, capacity could be about to be improved by up to 97 per cent, much like moving from a USB to a microSD. The breakthrough is how data centres are cooled, and it will change the way the sector develops—and where. From surf parks to the basements of the buildings we live and work in, data centres are poised for a major evolution thanks to immersion cooling ( pictured above ), which will replace air cooling used in the data centres of today. Architectus infrastructure senior leader Dean Symington says the end of air cooling is near. He outlined the “data centres that won’t last” as well as opportunities for offices and communities of the future during Urbanity-25, The Urban Developer’s flagship conference on the Gold Coast last month. “A traditional data hall effectively has the air-con units along the perimeter and a series of hot-aisle or cold-aisle containments and you are limited on how much you can cool those racks down,” Symington says. “Back five years ago you’d have 10kW a rack which was pretty easy to cool with air, whereas now unless you start implementing things like in-row cooling, you cap out at 45kW a rack. “The market is beyond that already, where it is moving now is liquid to chip [and] you start to get double the kilowatts that air cooling provides. ▲ Architectus infrastructure senior leader Dean Symington presenting at Urbanity-25 on the Gold Coast. “Liquid immersion is probably where it is going to end up [after that] and quicker than you think,” Symington says. “You change out the actual server and you put it in a tub of petroleum-based liquid.” Air-cooled data centres use from 10kW to 45kW per rack; liquid-to-chip are 50-100kW per rack; but liquid immersion offer 100-plus kW per rack. This means the new tech’s capacity is more than 10 times greater than the original air-cooled systems built in Australia. Symington says the area needed is also much smaller, which not only has implications for existing hyperscale centres but also where future data centres can be built. “Now, if you want a 2MW data hall you need about 1000sq m of space… or if you put 20 liquid immersion pods in the hall you get the same output but in only 3 per cent of the space. “That’s a 97 per cent reduction but the same output. “The cooling towers and HVAC systems are replaced by heat pumps, [but] you still need the internet and security, and back-up generators. “Then we can start to see this sort of product sleeve into office buildings.” ▲ Size comparison of an air-cooled versus immersion cooled racks across a data centre floorplan. But all is not lost for existing infrastructure as it can be upgraded or adapted, and as always, location is everything. “Cloud data centres need to be where the customer is but AI factories can be anywhere,” Symington says. “If you could design a data centre with a 1000sq m air-cooled hall and you want to convert it to liquid immersion, you could turn a 2MW hall [into] a 20MW hall ... a 100MW air cool into a gigawatt hall. “You just need to have the right flexibility in your infrastructure and build form. “Assets need to be changeable and flexible enough that you can plug in and plug out, bump in and bump out, just like a theatre taking out stage sets.” The Cloud in the basement The infrastructure expert says that with this greater output and smaller size, data centres could be a consideration in new city buildings, possibly in the basement. “Just like office towers offer an onsite gym, end-of-trip and concierge they could then offer a data component onsite,” Symington says. “You could also use the heat produced for a pool or the building itself.” Meanwhile, new data centre development applications are popping up every month, including a co-located facility in Auckland which will use the heat generated from a data centre to warm the water of a surf park. ▲ Rendering of the pool-side data centre and community planned for Auckland in New Zealand. Macquarie Data Centres in NSW began using this cooling technology a few years ago and is now looking at retrofitting existing sites “even if it is challenging”, according to the company. Architectus has a number of data centre projects in the works ranging from hyperscale to cityside. “We’re currently working on a data centre in the [Fortitude] Valley with NextDC; and Multiplex—one on the Sunny Coast and one on the Gold Coast,” Symington says. “In these areas you need to have an architectural response; it needs to be built within the community rather than just a shed.” New investment in Australian data centres from now to 2030 is expected to exceed $26 billion and capacity will more than double from 1350MW to 3100MW, according to research by Mandala. That report was commissioned by five of Australia’s largest data centre operators—AirTrunk, Amazon Web Services, CDC Data Centres, Microsoft and NEXTDC. “That means everything that has been built up until 2024 needs to be built again by 2030 to meet forecasts,” Symington says.

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