In today’s global data centre industry, all types of players are seeking to come up with answers on how to improve speed to power, bringing capacity online fast enough to meet growing AI and data centre demand.
As the data centre and energy industries increasingly converge, energy providers are getting more involved in the market and seeking ways to overcome the major roadblocks to growth. These include lengthy interconnection queues, complex compliance and approval processes, and limited generation capacity to support new large computational loads.
One answer is having a broad service and product portfolio to help different customers address a range of operating scenarios, whether grid-connected or, at least temporarily, islanded environments, while managing the fluctuating power demands of AI-driven workloads.
“We see many solution providers offering a single approach to customers,” says Frank Berring, senior director of business development at SMA America. “However, clients tell us they face different problem sets for different types of data centres. This is why our portfolio breadth and expertise in both islanded and grid-connected systems are highly valued in this evolving market.”
Decades of experience
SMA America, headquartered in Rocklin, California, has been expanding its presence in the data centre arena for the past couple of years. In doing so, it brings with it the necessary widespread experience to help customers accelerate their propositions on the energy front in a technologically and environmentally sustainable way.
“We have 45 years of experience since SMA’s formation in grid integration, power conversion and solving stability problems across multiple applications,” says Berring. “We also have the engineering services to help customers navigate approval and interconnection processes, and we’re with the customer throughout the lifecycle of their project, from design to commissioning and operation.”
For grid-connected data centres, SMA has solutions like medium-voltage UPS and grid-forming inverters to improve stability and decouple loads from the grid to ease the effect of power oscillations and disturbances.
For islanded and microgrid-based facilities, which are set to become increasingly necessary to keep pace with AI-driven demand, the firm harnesses battery-energy-storage systems and advanced inverter controls to smooth load profiles and boost generator efficiency.
Tim Stocker, a system architect for data centres at SMA America, illustrates the challenges for islanded systems by likening them to a car driving along a highway repeatedly accelerating and braking.
“This will neither be efficient, nor will the car last long,” he says. “Our inverters smooth out the data centre load for generators, helping them both operate at peak efficiency and last longer between maintenance cycles, as well as reducing the number of generators required.”
Broad but focused
At present, SMA is focusing on three overarching solutions for the US data centre market – GridAssist, designed for smart and cost-optimised grid enablement; GridLink AC, for stability amid grid isolation; and GridLink DC, coming in 2027 as a purpose-built offering to handle the next generation of 800VDC-based AI data centre racks.
The company is focusing on its key strengths in power-conversion, grid-forming and energy-storage technologies. In doing this, SMA believes it can provide an edge in these niches through its mature platforms and manufacturing capacity, while some of the major players may already be sold out of equipment for a couple of years.
The good news for the industry is that the company has accumulated many decades of experience in energy and a laser-guided specialism in critically important technologies. “With data centres really kicking into high gear on a massive scale, there’s a lot of business to go around,” says Stocker.
He adds that SMA is well-prepared to navigate the rapid evolution of the data centre industry, having consistently adapted to the demands of the energy market in the past four decades.
“There’s a huge growth opportunity for us to bring our mature technologies that have proven themselves time and time again to data centres.”
