How Schneider Electrical begins the expansion of the infrastructure in Nvidia’s infrastructure

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Despite its name, Schneider Electric does not produce any electricity. It is an energy management company that mixes electrification and digitization together so that customers know exactly where their energy is used and can optimize their energy consumption in real time.

It is the largest energy management provider for data centers, which is about a quarter of its business, and works with Chipmacher and Wall Street Powerhouse Nvidia.

Schneider announced in June to work with Nvidia to meet the growing demand for sustainable AI-capable infrastructure. This was a research and development partnership for the systems for power, cooling, control and rack with high density to enable the next generation of AI factories in Europe and finally beyond.

Then Schneider announced new, high-technical and detailed blueprints from data centers last month, which were developed with NVIDIA and that, according to the company, will significantly accelerate the construction times and help the operators to apply AI-capable infrastructure.

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The first part of it is integrated performance management and liquid cooling control systems. The second is a framework for the development of the new Blackwell chips from Nvidia.

“We ensure that the solution we put together with every generation that you put together minimizes energy consumption to supply your installations with electricity,” said Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman of Schneider Electric. “These chips that activate AI or AI are chips that consume a lot of energy, and they have to cool them down directly on the chip by bringing liquid directly to the chip.”

The partnership could prove to be extremely lucrative, especially in view of the latest investment of $ 100 billion in Nvidia in Openai. Other data centers mean more demand not only for energy, but also for energy management.

“We enter into a new era of accelerated computing, in which integrated intelligence in terms of electricity, cooling and operations will redefine the architecture of the data center,” said Scott Wallace, director of the Engineering data center at NVIDIA, in a publication on the new Schneider design.

In a positive feedback loop, KI helps to increase energy efficiency, even if it absorbs more energy. This is not only in data centers, but in the entire built environment.

“To make it very easy, the AI ​​can help win efficiency four times more than it consumes, at least four to nine times more,” said Tricoire.

The electricity consumption has already been digitized, but it was difficult to optimize this on a scale.

“Today we have computer engines for the first time that can integrate the complexity of what you do, what I do, what this data center does, what the power grid does, what can produce this power plant, what this solar roof can do in real time and ensure that we consume much better to do the right type of energy.

The proliferation of energy sources, including solar, wind, geothermal energy and core, creates a decentralized model of energy generation. This is one of the biggest changes in the market.

“If your home no longer consumes electricity because you are autonomous with solar batteries because you charge your electric vehicle, this means that you have freed enough electricity to provide a fraction of this data center that is nearby,” said Tricoire. “We can all be in our companies in our houses, in our daily life, in professional life in the actors in this transition, which is more efficient and sustainable.”

Tricoire referred to other geographies such as Europe, India and China, which due to a lack of fossil fuels of electrification. For them it is the only way to be more competitive. He said that this would lead to further innovations in this sector and American companies are pushing to follow the example – despite the political headwind in the USA due to renewable energies.

“Companies are very pragmatic. If a solution earns money, you will choose? And if it is better for your footprint, you will go even faster,” said Tricoire. “So much innovation takes place today, and the cost curves of new technologies are so fast that companies take new ways to do things.”

Tricoire was in the company for almost 40 years and said that he had never seen the type of dramatic and quick maturity and growth of energy technology that he was seeing.

“I think people underestimate the revolution, which will happen in the field of energy in the next two decades,” said Tricoire, adding that the combination of electrification technologies and digitization, which has been reinforced by AI to a completely new level, creates a number of ways that we have never seen before.

“And the good news is that there are no things that should be used in 10 years and 20 years. These are technologies that should be used today with a great economic return,” said Tricoire.