Given the heat wave in London, it seems timely to be discussing cooling technology. After speaking with Lee at O-Hx, recent events have highlighted a critical weakness in data-centre resilience: power continuity means very little if your cooling infrastructure can’t keep up.
As AI drives rack densities higher and thermal loads increase, the industry needs to start thinking about thermal resilience in the same way it thinks about electrical resilience.
Here’s why thermal energy storage could become an essential part of the next generation of data-centre infrastructure.
Google Cloud’s recent Netherlands outage is a timely reminder that data-centre resilience is no longer only about protecting the electrical supply.
An incident potentially costing tens of millions across Google and its customers.
According to Google’s preliminary report, an upstream electrical fault disrupted both power distribution and cooling equipment. Cooling capacity was lost, temperatures rose rapidly and servers, storage clusters and network switches were shut down to protect them from extreme heat.
The resulting service disruption continued for almost 15 hours while the site and affected infrastructure were safely recovered.
The lesson is simple:
Electrical UPS protects the power. But what protects the cooling?
This is where thermal energy storage has an increasingly important role.
EnergiVault from O-Hx stores cooling capacity that can be deployed when chillers or heat-rejection equipment become unavailable – providing a “Thermal Spinning Reserve” while generators stabilise, chillers restart or workloads are safely transferred.
Others store cold. EnergiVault responds – turning thermal storage into a true Thermal UPS.
EnergiVault is not a replacement for resilient electrical architecture. Pumps, controls, valves and cooling distribution must also be protected. But without responsive, dynamic, stored thermal capacity, high-density and liquid-cooled environments can run out of time very quickly.
As AI rack densities increase, thermal ride-through must be treated with the same seriousness as electrical ride-through.
Power resilience without thermal resilience is incomplete.
If EnergiVault – A Unique thermal resilience system, could help prevent an outage potentially costing tens of millions, would you invest in it – or continue accepting the risk of operating without one?
If the O-hx proposition is of interest, feel free to get in touch.