Solving the data centre ‘energy trilemma’ with Hitachi Energy

It’s becoming more important for the data centre industry to be ‘good grid citizens’. But what does this actually mean?

For Hitachi Energy, it’s about having strong power solutions and confronting what CTO Gerhard Salge refers to as the “energy trilemma” – security, sustainability and affordability.

According to him, the rapid expansion of AI is creating a new source of electricity demand that the power grid, in its current state, can’t tolerate. With electricity demand expected to rise to 11% by 2030 in the US alone, and intensifying public resistance to data centres, the AI challenge looms over the industry, forcing operators to consider new power solutions.

Salge shared with Capacity how data centres can be built with the energy trilemma in mind and how this isn’t just an energy or economics issue – it’s also about people.

Confronting the energy trilemma

The three elements of the energy trilemma are all prominent issues for people and industries. Everything is connected and, if managed well, data centre operators can achieve a good balance between them.

Salge believes that AI, data centres and AI technologies exist within the centre of that.

“Power systems are becoming much bigger and more complex,” he said. “To manage that with the same level of electricity security as before, you need more intelligence in the system.”

When variable renewables like wind and solar are introduced, while they come with the lowest cost of power generation, they are more complex to integrate into the system. So, although they are critical for affordability, they also need to be selected appropriately so energy security isn’t compromised compared with dispatchable generation.

“This is where affordability meets sustainability, if managed well – and digital technologies and AI data centres can bring the intelligence and control logic needed to make that happen,” Salge said.

Alongside this insecure energy backdrop, AI data centres are surging in demand and adding gigawatts of power that are difficult to manage. Pressures on grids are intensified by the fact that a lot of AI data centres are often located in areas with constrained power grids or warmer climates that require additional energy for cooling.

“It’s always important to do holistic planning of power generation, the power system and the demand together as one plan, involving experienced players across investors, operators, technology providers and all the key stakeholders,” Salge explained.

Making data centres self-sufficient

Many countries are planning to build AI data centres with high power needs, but there aren’t often systems in place that were built for such innovation. This raises the question of expansion, Salge said, as procuring power and connecting to local grids can be challenging.

“To confront this, some operators are bringing their own power so they can connect to the grid with lower power need,” he explained. “What’s clear is that data centres need extremely high energy security, reliability and availability – that’s important to any operator.”

To operate a data centre off-grid requires everything a power system would normally provide – entirely on their own, which is an enormous effort. This is expected to become more mainstream, as grid connections can now take up to a decade and delay data centre projects.

These conversations come during a time of significant community pushback, with countries worldwide objecting to new data centres being built in their local area. While this has been a growing trend for some time, it is more of a public conversation now as resources like water and electricity are under more strain with the demands of AI data centres. Residents cite noise pollution, higher utility bills, the ruin of green spaces and a lack of transparency from government as main concerns.

Solutions like behind-the-meter power therefore could enable operators to bring data centres online immediately without compromising the grid.

“Finding the right location for a data centre is tricky, and power requirements are one of the key drivers,” Salge noted. “If they bring their own generation, it depends on the type of generation and how accepted that type is in the chosen country or community.”

He added: “Some are considering SMR nuclear technology for the future, but that won’t be ready very soon. It depends on, first, whether you’re able to tap into those resources, install them and get acceptance for them.”

Hitachi Energy: Building the ‘good grid citizens’ of tomorrow

The complexity of these discussions is often underestimated, Salge explained. However, Hitachi Energy is eager to help data centre developers and hyperscalers find the balanced solutions he has described.

“We take a very holistic approach for developers, together with utilities, to build something that genuinely delivers resilience and reliability for data centres,” he added. “We want AI data centres to be as ‘good grid citizens’ as possible.”

He describes this reality as a bit of give-and-take. While data centres bring AI and compute power, they also bring demand. A data centre being a good grid citizen means it can offer flexibility when working with a utility.

“If you sit together, build partnerships, collaborate, plan together and execute together, you usually get win-win situations,” Salge said.

Hitachi Energy tries to foster this as much as it can in power electronics and HVDC, which can transport electricity over long distances and across other technologies around the energy triangle.

“That’s where we can usually build a trustworthy, strong relationship with AI data centre operators, developers and utilities on the other side,” he added.

HVDC is already a prominent solution because, Salge noted, the best locations for generation might be far from the demand centres, so need to be integrated into existing power systems. But it goes beyond that, as power electronics can control power quality – a stable frequency and the right voltage – much faster.

“That matters because new power-generation technologies also rely on power electronics – a solar park or wind farm connected via power electronics can change output in milliseconds, whereas dispatchable rotating machines respond much more slowly,” he said, explaining that, when combining slower machines with faster-changing renewable generation, the system becomes more challenged.

“Adding power-quality elements that are as fast as the power electronics themselves helps us better support energy security,” he said.

In this vein, Hitachi Energy has co-designed technology with Nvidia to enable significant increases in power supply over traditional systems. The latest 800 VDC architecture was developed specifically to streamline how electricity flows from the grid into servers.

“What data centres of the future need is higher power density on less land,” Salge noted. “Space-constrained data centres can use higher energy-density concepts: what we call “power-rack” concepts, converting directly from medium voltage to 800 VDC in a very energy-dense way. That again relies on the most modern power electronics, combined with new transformer technologies, operating at higher frequencies in a more compact, energy-dense form.”

These power technologies are still under development, but Hitachi Energy is confident the industry can find the right balance of risk versus benefit.

“There will be costs and risks that come with introducing new technology,” Salge said. “Quality and experience matter a great deal – how you bring new technology into scaled industrial production and into applications where reliability is the absolute priority.”

Making the most of what data centres already have

With data centre demand set to rise further over the next few years, Salge advocated for using existing infrastructure as effectively as possible – not just to support innovation, but also to support those who live close by.

“Digital technologies can help a lot here, optimising power flows and identifying the best locations where, with minimum effort, you can add capacity and demand to the power system and tap into additional generation capacity as quickly as possible,” he explained. “After finding the best location, deploying technology to make the best use of existing infrastructure will help to relieve bottlenecks. In many countries, this needs to come together with regulatory improvements.”

When successful, these regions could gain economic and social benefits – something that’s discussed plenty in the media. Salge added it will also help other industries and critical needs like cooling.

“It doesn’t help if you have the best industry in the world, but people are dying in heatwaves. That’s not acceptable,” he explained. “Equally, it doesn’t help if people are safe while industry suffers. You need to address both – and both come down to running the power system of the future.

“Ultimately it’s about the health and future of people, economics and the future of industries around the world – all of which rely heavily on the power system.”

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