In this interview, AZoCleantech speaks with Giampiero Frisio, President of ABB Electrification, about the company's efforts in driving sustainable electrification solutions, their approach to integrating renewable energy sources, and the future of energy efficiency in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
Can you please introduce yourself and your role at ABB Electrification?
My name is Giampiero Frisio, and I was recently appointed President of ABB Electrification. Before that, I was the President of ABB’s Smart Power Division for six years. In my new role, I will work across the business to drive collaboration with electrical distribution and energy management customers and partners to address critical challenges such as energy efficiency, sustainability, and reliable power distribution.
My role is to support, challenge, and enable the strategies of the five divisions in our business area. Across ABB Electrification, we closely follow key industry trends and enable our customers’ important work through innovative products and services. We focus on our people, our collaboration with partners, and a robust growth strategy that includes M&A, JVs, and partnerships. From smart buildings and smarter grids to data centers and advanced manufacturing, ABB is at the center of the energy transition.
Can you provide an overview of ABB's role in the data center industry, as well as ABB's initiatives to make data centers more sustainable?
We are working with many of the world’s data center operators to ensure they have safe, reliable, and energy-efficient technologies to manage their energy needs. These needs include reliability to avoid downtime, availability of electricity when data centers need it, power to meet increasing power usage needs, and finally, sustainability through energy efficiency and finding ways to use sustainable energy sources wherever possible.
We offer a range of services to support vital electrical systems, keeping them running reliably and efficiently while driving down operating costs. We also support energy independence and microgrids, integrating renewables with battery storage options and modular and offsite builds to scale up capacity. Our digital solutions offer insights, preventive and predictive maintenance, and data reporting. To give just one example, Lakeland Community College in Ohio reduced its data center’s energy use by 53 %, lowered its energy costs, and achieved 100 % uptime by introducing our ABB Ability™ Data Center Automation solution.
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With data centers accounting for 1-1.5 % of global electricity use, how is ABB addressing the need for improved energy efficiency in line with the IEA's targets for 2030? How are these efforts contributing to the broader goal of carbon neutrality?
ABB technologies such as switchgear, circuit breakers, Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS), microgrids with renewables, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) all support energy efficiency. Improving site-level energy consumption in data centers can offer significant sustainability improvements. So, understanding the impact and ROI of these solutions on consumption is crucial. Software solutions play a vital role in monitoring energy efficiency and energy source optimization, enhancing grid security, and minimizing energy consumption for reliable energy supply.
ABB Ability™ Data Center Automation systems collect and analyze data on power consumption, allowing users to optimize energy usage while lowering energy costs. Combining digitalization in power conditioning, low-voltage circuit breakers, switches, motor protection and control, and safety products with data-driven insights helps optimize energy efficiency, reliability, and management of electrical assets. ABB’s digital solutions also make reporting easier. Our solutions facilitate data centers compliance with energy use and efficiency reporting requirements while helping end users integrate power from renewable energy sources on- or off-premises.
The benefits of improved energy efficiency also enable greater scalability and uptime. By enhancing equipment performance, data centers can effectively scale services to enable more intensive applications and handle increased data traffic. NEXTDC, Australia’s leading independent data center operator, has a brand promise to provide customers with a 100 % uptime guarantee. ABB has a long-term supply agreement to monitor and tune the performance of their critical data center facilities in real time, identifying possible problems before they happen.
What are the key steps ABB recommends for achieving sustainability in data centers, and why are these steps important for reducing carbon footprints?
Sustainability across the data center ecosystem is critically important. Data Centers must balance energy efficiency and energy costs with growing demand, scalability, and uptime. Fortunately, technology is available today to optimize energy use, mitigate on-site and grid-level strain, integrate renewables, avoid downtime, and enable sustainable scaling up. This will all help reduce global energy demand and carbon footprints as data center workload increases.
Design plays a major role in data center efficiency. Ensuring that energy processes are well-designed, well-serviced, and well-managed is key. Upgrading to the newest and most energy-efficient equipment will support more sustainable operations. Planning and understanding systems, combined with the physical infrastructure on-site, will create the most efficient energy systems and the most reliable data centers.
There is also a shift to sustainable electrification. Our customers are looking for innovative ways to integrate renewable energy sources, either for lower carbon solutions or to reduce energy costs. Purchase Power Agreements (PPAs) facilitate the purchase of energy from renewable sources. They are a good place to start as they increase sustainable energy usage and mitigate risk.
Some data center customers are using energy service companies (ESCO) to help design a bespoke energy-saving plan. This includes recommending the integration of renewable energy sources and microgrid solutions. This will diversify energy supply, reduce grid dependency, and lower carbon footprint. This is critical for operators to drive global sustainability goals without sacrificing uptime.
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What are some of the primary drivers behind the rapid growth of data, and how do they impact the sustainability efforts of data centers?
Data Centers are at the core of the digital revolution, processing and storing massive amounts of data. We foresee no slowdown in data center growth, whether from the shift of computing resources to the cloud or the significant growth of AI.
Data centers' power needs are growing as a result of AI, and this creates increased pressure on local grids.
AI server racks consume around 4 to 8 times more energy than conventional servers resulting in the need for more power and cooling. AI is also extremely dynamic - batch processing loads can be 100 % on or 100 % off, often making it difficult to predict power needs.
Data centers are also aging, with nearly 80 % being more than 10 years old. This creates problems with reliability, efficiency, and capacity. Data centers outfitted with older technology struggle to adapt to increasing pressures, resulting in less efficient processing and greater power needs. Consequently, this impacts both sustainability and reliability.
For more on sustainable AI, check out this article on balancing tech and ethics for environmental preservation and social equity!
Can you highlight some of the innovative technologies ABB is deploying to support data center sustainability, such as variable frequency drives or digital monitoring solutions?
We have invested in innovation to address the growing need for power for our data center customers. Two years ago, we introduced the market’s first medium-voltage UPS solution, HiPerGuard, which protects data centers in the event of a network failure, service outage, or blackout. Next-gen AI data centers are early adopters of this first-to-market power protection technology, which offers higher efficiency and can be used as a battery storage solution to stabilize grids. Using HiPerGuard, putting all their IT and mechanical loads on the same medium voltage power protection system means a smaller footprint for the power and more space for the servers, with less copper, less heat, and a higher system efficiency of 98 %.
We are working with customers to develop environmentally responsible data centers for AI. They use 100 % renewable energy, they channel heat from the servers to greenhouses growing fresh produce, and ABB supplies the cutting-edge power architecture.
ABB’s medium-voltage switchgear and variable frequency drives also improve efficiency and lower carbon footprint by balancing power distribution based on the real-time demand of the data center’s hardware.
As well as offering a very comprehensive critical power portfolio, digital tools such as ABB Ability™ Data Center Automation systems collect and analyze data on power consumption, allowing users to optimize energy usage and lower energy costs. ABB’s circuit monitoring system, which helps ensure consistent power comes into data centers, can be added to pre-existing wired panels and immediately provides data collection, analysis, and energy optimization.
We also offer preventive and predictive maintenance solutions and continuous proactive monitoring. This supports the shift away from time-based maintenance to condition-based maintenance with AI, which helps extend equipment lifetime and reduce plant downtime with rapid fault diagnosis.
Can you explain how microgrids and battery energy storage systems (BESS) are transforming data centers into more sustainable and resilient operations?
Building a microgrid is a great way to enhance resilience and improve sustainability. Integrating renewable energy sources and BESS into a microgrid offers more capacity and increases flexibility. For data centers, this diversifies energy supply, reduces grid dependency, and lowers carbon footprint. It will also improve resilience and make it easier to manage energy costs.
By managing energy resources better and more efficiently within the data center we help customers solve issues at site-level, reducing grid-level challenges. For example, increasing site-level resilience with a microgrid structure reduces the impact of grid inefficiencies or outages. This can balance energy supply and demand regardless of grid activity. BESS can cover the power peak of demand, making the utility network more reliable.
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How do different technologies like lithium-ion batteries, ultracapacitors, and fuel cells play a role in enhancing the sustainability and efficiency of data centers?
Over the last 10 years, there have been some giant steps forward in terms of the technologies available to data center customers. In the future, technologies like lithium-ion batteries, ultracapacitors, and fuel cells could have their place in certain applications.
Lithium-based storage solutions are affordable and effective for battery storage, while our UPS solutions with Zinc 5 and NiZn technology provide higher power density. Supercapacitors also offer high energy density, and fuel cell technology will play an increasingly important role in microgrids in the future. This is just the beginning, as we continue to collaborate with customers and tech partners to bring innovative products and solutions to market, supporting data centers.
How can data centers effectively integrate renewable energy sources into their operations, and what role does ABB play in facilitating this integration?
ABB helps data center customers design systems to integrate sustainable energy into their systems while maintaining uptime and resilience. Wind and solar power output is often inconsistent, so we recommend technologies like BESS that act as a backup battery when the supply is intermittent.
We know that one size does not fit all. Factors like location and local grid availability, size, climate, demand, and the age of energy systems are all considered when integrating renewable energy sources – whether on- or off-site.
At ABB, we have more than 500 global consultants in our Sustainability Advisory Services team who audit and make recommendations for our data center customers on the best solutions for their needs. They aim to offer a one-stop shop for improving the availability, reliability, predictability, and sustainability of operations. Our strategic assessments explain and visualize the status of a plant’s overall system condition. It also addresses how performance, safety, and sustainability can be improved while increasing availability and timely service to control and mitigate risk, ensuring the highest return on investment.
ABB’s digital solutions help data centers integrate power from renewable energy sources daily. Our products offer monitoring, control, load and outage management, and remote access. Preventive maintenance and distribution automation can predict potential outages. These capabilities, combined with advancements in AI, will enable the intelligent matching of supply capacity and resources with complex demand patterns. This will facilitate the seamless integration of renewables into daily operations.
How is the rise of artificial intelligence impacting the design and operation of data centers, and how is ABB responding to these changes?
AI is one of several technologies currently straining data centers’ computing capacities. Right now, we know that AI’s main impact is on the power infrastructure inside data centers. This includes cooling, which requires a high level of energy consumption.
There is significant growth in the data center market with an increasing focus on co-location and global hyperscale accounts. Sizes are increasing to reach capacities of 300 to 500 MW – a trend that is expected to continue with the rise of AI and cloud services worldwide.
Our wide range of off-the-shelf and customizable solutions support cost-effective and rapid scaling of data center electricity capacity. We offer modular and prefabricated solutions, and we offer low-voltage and medium-voltage solutions on skids.
The ABB portfolio allows data centers to futureproof their operations. Our technologies help data centers scale their energy needs as demand increases for AI and cloud computing processing while also recognizing growing trends in digitization, renewables integration, and sustainability-driven electrification.
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What future trends do you see in the realm of data center sustainability, and how is ABB positioning itself to lead in this evolving landscape?
There are many factors driving greater sustainability across data centers. These include the need for more power with existing infrastructure, the rapid growth of new hyperscale facilities, and increased regulations impacting data centers' licenses to operate in the future across developed economies. In the EU, for example, the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact makes the use of 75 % renewable energy a key requirement for European data centers by the end of 2025 and 100% renewables by the end of 2030.
Sustainable energy solutions will become ever more important over time to drive the scale and growth of data centers, and we are committed to being a partner in this transition by developing technologies and insights that help make net zero at these facilities a reality.
We offer an increasingly intuitive digital/software portfolio. Our digital technology is helping customers to make smarter decisions to improve reliability, cut costs and reduce emissions. Our digital solutions can help data center customers understand their ROI. They also help with data reporting, for example in the EU, where businesses need to publish reports on energy use and efficiency improvements.
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Is there anything else you would like to add that our readers may find interesting?
Technological innovation and collaboration will be critical to the growth of the data center sector and present the greatest opportunity and challenge for our customers. We, however, were built for this – to solve problems that help accelerate the energy transition. We see solutions that are already taking shape that capture the excess heat generated by data centers to heat homes, swimming pools, or even greenhouses. We know that to make this happen, we must collaborate with our customers and partners to create products and solutions that will move us forward towards a net-zero world.
It is also fair to say that while AI is going to fuel significant growth in data centers, it is also going to be a significant part of the solution. We are only at the start of a journey with AI. We know that AI will help us predict problems or outages before they happen – avoiding outages that result in downtime and unnecessary costs. It can also help optimize power usage and consumption in real time based on the data center’s current utilization. We can also use AI and machine learning to better recognize energy patterns in data center operations and adapt to changing energy needs in real-time. The world needs more power and lower emissions, and we are at a pivotal turning point in making this a reality. It’s an exciting time for the industry and for the world as we accelerate the energy transition.
About Giampiero Frisio
Giampiero Frisio holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Pavia University in Italy and has been with ABB since 1995. Throughout his tenure, he has held various managerial positions, ranging from operations to regional and global division management. Most recently, he served as the Division President of ABB Smart Power since 2018, overseeing the global performance of the Smart Power business. Prior to that, Frisio was the Managing Director of ABB’s Protection and Connection Business Unit.
Currently, Frisio leads ABB Electrification, ABB’s largest business, with over 50,000 employees, $14.6 billion in revenue, and operations in more than 100 countries.
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