Siemens is working with Irish intelligent power management company Eaton to develop a fast-track approach to building data centres with integrated onsite power.

The two companies plan to address urgent market needs by offering reliable grid-independent energy supplies and standard modular systems to facilitate swift data centre construction and deployment.

The collaboration will enable simultaneous construction of data centres and associated on-site power generation with grid connection and the integration of renewables to meet regional regulatory requirements, if required.

Siemens Energy’s modular and scalable power plant concept is tailored to the needs of data centre operators. The standard configuration generates 500MW of electricity, featuring SGT-800 gas turbines, redundancy and additional battery storage systems.

Based on its modular approach, the size of the plant can be scaled up and down. In the future, it will also operate in a carbon-neutral manner, provided hydrogen is available and part of the data centre’s sustainability strategy. The Siemens Energy concept (www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/products-services/solutions-industry/data-center.html) also includes an optional emission-free clean air grid connection to be installed either during construction or as a retrofit. This feature would enable data centres to provide grid services.

Eaton will provide customers with electrical equipment such as medium voltage switchgear, low voltage switchgear, UPS, busways, structural support, racks and containment systems, engineering services and the software offerings needed to protect and enable IT loads from the medium-voltage grid to the chip and help accelerate building and commissioning data centres with skidded and modular designs. See www.eaton.com/us/en-us/markets/data-centers/eaton-and-siemens-energy.html for more information.

“Our approach of letting customers pick the right balance of energy sources is very flexible and construction to start-up time is swift with options to reduce emissions in both the short and long term,” said Cyrille Brisson, global segment leader at Eaton. “Crucially, our approach offers data centre owners and developers the opportunity to build capacity and bring it online fast in any location where they have land available that is close to gas, water and fibre.”

Andreas Pistauer, global head of sales at Siemens Energy, added: “We offer hyperscalers, co-locators and investors a unique package, enabling them to reduce the time-to-market by up to two years in many places which leads to significant revenue gains. Our power plant design is built with redundancy, eliminating the need for backup diesel generators, and reducing CO₂ emissions by about 50 per cent.”

Founded in 1911, Eaton (www.eaton.com) is an intelligent power management company with revenues of nearly $25bn in 2024. The company serves customers in more than 160 countries.

Siemens Energy (www.siemens-energy.com) employs around 101,000 people worldwide in more than 90 countries and generated revenue of €34.5bn in 2024.