From ChatGPT and virtual assistants to fraud detection, medical diagnoses, predictive eCommerce engines and automating countless other tasks, AI is impacting how we see and interact with the world around us.
AI is also impacting elements of our community infrastructure in ways that most of us don’t see; namely the growing strain on utilities to deliver the power required by AI-enabled data centers. In fact, access to power has become a critical factor in driving new data center growth.
It takes a tremendous amount of electricity to run the racks of Graphics Processing Units (GPU) that drive AI computing. GPUs are very powerful chips that generate a lot of heat. In addition to the power to run them they must also be cooled, significantly adding to the energy load.
To meet rising power requirements many AI data centers are adding more AC transmission lines or upgrading the amperage from their utility provider. Some are even building private power generation sources on-site to boost capacity.
Either way, that means more and heavier cable loads running into the data center to power and cool the building. Once inside, there are miles of AC cables carrying lower voltages from transformers to every rack, server and monitor, data cables linking multiple racks of GPUs into an AI supercomputer, plus hundreds of connections to data storage, backup servers, network assets, and cloud services.
Harnessing the Power of AI takes Power
Stress on power grids is only going to increase. Hyperscale data centers are popping up everywhere. Some communities have gone so far as to place a moratorium on future data centers as regulators fear their electricity consumption could impact the utility’s ability to serve its residential customers. That is forcing data centers to get creative in sourcing their power.
In one extreme example, Microsoft signed a 20-year contract to purchase 100% of the power produced by the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor to feed its voracious appetite for electricity to power its AI data centers. But what about the utilities, enterprises, and data centers that don’t have that kind of scale or financial resources?
More cabling everywhere requires better cable management, and that’s where Snake Tray comes in. We are the preeminent source for the intelligent cable conveyance solutions electrical contractors need to power, organize, and support all the power and data cables running to and inside modernized AI computing environments.
Feeding Power Hungry AI Data Centers
Let’s look at three alternatives that data centers have to expand their electrical capacity and the appropriate Snake Tray product(s) to facilitate the connections.
- Add AC power transmission lines from the utility. Provided the utility has the capacity to spare, running additional or higher capacity trunk lines from the nearest substation into the data center is the most direct route to increased wattage.
Snake Max is a hard side rail cable management system with prefabricated sections and weatherproof polycarbonate snap-in cable managers called Clicks that maintain NEC 310.15 free air cable separation for multiple tiers of cables as large as 1250 Kcmil. For use inside and outside the data center.
653 Series Aluminum Cable Trays are lightweight ladder sections, turns, and fittings that offer easy installation and a high loading capacity, great for high voltage cables.
- Private power generation. When adding transmission lines is not an option due to capped utility capacity, logistical issues, or cost, some data centers are finding innovative ways to self-generate power to meet increased demand. These include installing solar panel arrays on the data center roof, on covered parking structures, or in a field adjacent to the facility. Others are constructing or upping the capacity of on-site fossil fuel back-up generators to be more than an emergency solution and used daily to supplement electricity consumption.
407 Series Solar Snake Tray is the world’s only weatherproof, hand-bendable cable conveyance that quickly and securely carries DC feeder cables from solar panels to their termination points using a lobster trap design. Can be installed on a rooftop, parking structure, or ground mounted.
Step up to the 801 Series Solar Mega Snake steel basket tray system to organize and carry larger volumes of feeder cables from bigger rooftop or brownfield sites. A variety of prefabricated straight sections, turns, Tees, and crossings with built-in mounting rails adapt to meet any terrain, distance, or mounting challenge.- Solar Snake Max XL for Messenger Wire is used by data centers constructing their own utility-grade solar plant on an adjacent field. Trenchless cable management carries up to 36 high ampacity DC cables to their interconnection points with maximum energy throughput and minimal labor, cost, and maintenance. Dual and single messenger wire systems are available. Data centers building fossil fuel generators on the property can use the same above-ground messenger wire systems or the Snake Max XL Hard Rail version to safely carry high voltage AC cables to the transformer interconnection area.
- A variety of easy to install cable hangers manage the string and low voltage data cables that run beneath the solar panels. Available in spring lock, tubular, and tree styles.
- Battery Storage. Many data centers building their own on-site power generators are also investing in Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) to store excess electricity and tap into it to meet increased needs on demand.
Snake Tray’s BESS solutions allow for above ground conveyance of all cables within an energy storage facility – entirely eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming trenching and burial. DC cables can be carried between batteries and inverters using Snake Tray’s Snake Max Hard Rail system, leveraging the benefits of being in the NEC free-air table. Low Voltage (LV) modules are designed to carry AC cables from battery inverters to transformers. They offer trefoil cleats to easily organize cable sets and protect against forces generated by short circuit events. Medium Voltage (MV) modules are optimized to carry medium voltage series circuits from one transformer to the next in a free-air environment. Ventilated or pedestrian-rated covers are available for both the LV and MV modules to protect cables from site-specific hazards. Further, auxiliary power, SATA, and fire protection cables can also be carried through BESS sites utilizing Snake Tray’s 407 Series, 801 Series, Snake Max, and Snake Loc products.
Meeting AI Cabling Demands Inside the Data Center
AI-enabled solutions are not single-server computing products; rather they are racks upon racks of GPUs and servers interconnected to process huge amounts of data. In addition to cables for power, there are hundreds of interface ports linking the individual components to each other, to network storage assets, outside cloud services, as well as monitors and peripheral devices.
And that’s just for one AI-enabled environment. In a hyperscale or co-location data center with multiple tenants running AI applications simultaneously, the power and cable management requirements grow exponentially.Snake Tray cable conveyance solutions for inside the AI data center include:
801 Series Mega Snake® is a hybrid cable tray that is as strong as aluminum yet as versatile as a basket cable tray. Pre-manufactured tray sections eliminate on-site fabrication for the fast construction of cable pathways carrying network and power cables overhead into each cage.
653 Series Aluminum Cable Trays are also excellent for navigating large volumes of high and low voltage cable loads around the interior of the building.
610 Series Steel Cable Runway provides maximum strength for heavy loads of bundled cables.
301 Series Snake Canyon is a modular system to create cable pathways beneath raised access floors. An easy way to add cable capacity to modernize smaller or older data centers with any kind of 2’ x 2’ raised access floor grid.
Snake Tray Helps Data Centers Manage AI
Data centers are getting bigger, consuming more power, and more populous thanks to AI. Rest assured the industry will find ways to continue building AI data centers and overcome the challenges to powering them – all great signs for the electrical contractors that connect data centers to the grid, the cloud, and to each other.
Whether your task involves enhancing the connections to traditional AC utility power sources or building new ones, Snake Tray has the intelligent cabling solutions to support the intense power requirements and data processing loads of AI data centers.
Need more information? Reach out to us with a brief description of your cabling project, and one of our specialists will be in touch to help you intelligently cable your next AI data center.
