The result is a 50% to 80% reduction in copper usage, due to fewer conductors and less parallel cabling, and an 8% to 12% reduction in annual energy-related OpEx through lower conversion and distribution losses.
By reducing conductor count, cabling, and redundant power components, 800VDC enables meaningful savings at both build-out and operational stages. AI-first facilities can see a $4 million to $8 million in CapEx savings per 10 MW build by reducing upstream AC. For a one-gigawatt data center, you’re saving a couple million pounds of copper wire, he said.
Burke says an all-DC data center is best done with a whole new facility rather than retrofitting old facilities. “[DC] is going to be in a lot of greenfield data centers that are going to be built, and data centers that are going to go to higher compute power are also going to DC,” he said. He did recommend all-DC retrofits for existing data centers that are going to employ high power computing with GPUs.
Enteligent’s unnamed and as yet unreleased product is a converter that takes 800 volts and partitions it to 50 volts for the computing servers. The company will provide a new power supply, power shelf that converts 800 volts DC to 50 volts DC much more efficiently than any current power supplies.
Burke said the company is doing NDA level testing and pilot programs now with its product, but it will be making a formal announcement within the next few weeks. There are a number of players in the DC arena focusing on different parts of the power supply market including Vertiv, Rutherford, Siemens, Eaton and many more.
