Japanese conglomerate Hitachi is partnering the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), an applied university, to develop a hybrid AC/DC rack-level power distribution testbed that could support energy-hungry data centres in future.
Described as a first in Singapore, the testbed will connect with the SIT Punggol Campus’ multi-energy micro grid, which relies on solar photovoltaic (PV) generation and other distributed energy sources.
In an announcement last week, the two parties said the campus will serve as a live industry test environment, allowing Hitachi and SIT to deploy and evaluate hybrid AC/DC power solutions in real-world conditions.
AI demand is forcing data centre operators to find new ways to power up their servers more efficiently and sustainably, especially across Southeast Asia, where the tropical climate requires significant energy to cool down hot-running servers.
The Hitachi and SIT testbed will be used to evaluate hybrid AC/DC power distribution approaches for rack-level data centre infrastructure, including higher-voltage direct current (DC) power distribution for efficient renewable energy integration.
Findings from the testbed will help to inform the future development of more energy-efficient and resilient data centre power architectures.
Beyond technology evaluation, this collaboration will provide SIT students with hands-on experience in applied energy innovation. They will work with Hitachi’s R&D team on assignments related to hybrid AC/DC power systems and renewable energy integration.
This comes after Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) started a trial in January to test high-voltage direct current (HVDC) AI infrastructure. If successful, the technology promises to be more efficiently in running high-power AI data centres.
Located on Jurong Island, that first-in-the-region testbed demonstrates HVDC integration with real AI workloads to support next-generation, high-density and high-resiliency computing.
