Rendering: paired racks either side of an aisle in a working hall, manifold posts near the rack faces

retrofit · per-MW economics

Retrofit, not rebuild

Liquid cooling inside a live hall, with the tenants still running.

Plan a phased rollout

Cost per MW · industry-published benchmark €400–600k liquid cooling retrofit

Floor released · industry-published benchmark 35–40% same power envelope

Retrofit vs new build · industry-published benchmark 4 vs 18 mo case vs build cycle

The maths that moves an approval

Per MW · per phase · per hall

Cost per MW €400–600k liquid cooling retrofit

A published estimate for taking a hall to direct-to-chip liquid cooling, per megawatt of IT load. industry-published benchmark

Floor released 35–40% of the footprint

Less floor for the same power envelope, which is the reason the line item survives a board review. industry-published benchmark

Capacity 2× IT load, same supply

The same electrical envelope carries twice the IT load on liquid. industry-published benchmark

Per-MW maths is what moves the approval; the part number comes later.

The long pole is power, not cooling

Retrofit · new build · grid queue

Cooling

4 months

A documented colocation retrofit, from first work to cooling on. industry-published benchmark

New build

18 months

The comparison case: a new hall of the same class. industry-published benchmark

Grid queue

12–24 months

Municipal supply work in the major markets. The cooling work waits behind this queue. industry-published benchmark

Order long-lead parts early: the electrical queue is longer than the cooling work. The density case itself is on the data centre page.

What blocks a retrofit

Four barriers · published retrofit review · industry-published benchmark

Upfront cost Capital lands before the first cabinet is densified, so the case has to be made on the whole hall.

Leak risk In a live hall a leak is an operations event, not a maintenance ticket.

Missing standards Without a shared interface language, selection and acceptance have nothing to point at.

Skills shortage The crews who can commission a loop are the crews already booked. Start-up support is on the service provider page.

On top of that Floor loading, the airflow that is already in place, and tenants who are not supposed to notice the work.

What a phased plan buys One row converted, measured, then repeated, with the hall's own numbers as the acceptance test.

Demand is pulling from the other end

Market · density · adoption

Colocation market $65.2B by 2027 · CAGR 9.4%

The market these operators are building into. industry-published benchmark

Modal cabinet 11 kW and rising

The most common cabinet density in service, still moving up. industry-published benchmark

Liquid cooling 19% / 36% deployed / planned

Deployed against planned, in the same survey year. industry-published benchmark

The window is open, with a date on it

EnEfG · draft amendment · retrofit-first parts

Rendering: a machined coupling spigot on a brushed stainless rack panel, blue latch levers beside it and a black hose running out of frame

Germany · EnEfG

The Energy Efficiency Act sets an energy reuse factor of at least 10% for the data centres it covers.

Draft amendment

A draft amendment would move the 2027 PUE target for facilities commissioned before July 2026 from 1.5 to 1.6. Draft text, not in force, and it does not cover every hall.

Retrofit-first parts

Dripless dry-break couplings and a 0U manifold sized for a narrow rear channel: the shapes a live row actually has room for, designed to the OCP UQD / UQDB specification. The 0U form is on the vertical 0U manifold page.

The window is open, but it has a date on it. The leak-test discipline behind these parts is on the quality page.

On the live row

Installed states · a hall that keeps running

Rendering: a manifold socket row seen square on, with tray plug rows stopping short of it in the foreground — Manifold socket rowblind-mate side

Rendering: a full-height vertical manifold bolted to a rear rack post, hoses fanning out to the trays — 0U on a rear postfull height, no floor space

Rendering: a horizontal manifold above a shelf with six braided hoses gathered and swept to one side — Hose bundleswept clear of the aisle

What the work is built from

Live retrofit · shared parts

Rendering: gloved hands mounting a slim manifold on a rack post in a live aisle — During the worklive hall, no shutdown

Rendering: four blind-mate coupling pairs in ascending size, natural stainless, on a dark grey ground — Shared blind-mate familyone catalogue, both routes

The couplings themselves are on the UQD quick disconnect page, and staged delivery is covered under project support.

Phased rollout

Pilot row first, then the hall?

Send the row you would pilot and the power envelope you are working inside. The reply is a phased plan, a row-level BOM and the lead-time map behind both, against 35–40% of the floor released at €400–600k per MW (industry-published benchmark).

Plan a phased rollout One business day · English quote + a one-page spec sheet

Stage 1 phased plan

Stage 2 row-level BOM

Stage 3 lead-time map

Request the phased-rollout pack