MHI improves data centre cooling efficiency
12th July 2026
JAPAN: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries claims to have demonstrated measurable improvement in data centre cooling energy consumption while maintaining stable operation.
The project was conducted at Fujitsu’s Akashi data centre in Hyogo Prefecture using the existing mix of equipment from multiple manufacturers.
While traditional optimisation focuses on individual equipment, this demonstration is said to have applied holistic control across the entire cooling system, including shared cooling infrastructure and air handling units in server rooms.
A key differentiator of this project was said to be the deployment without service interruption. Leveraging vendor agnostic cooling system optimisation technology developed by its research and innovation Centre, MHI conducted simulations and demonstrated optimised control.
Temperature distribution in the server room was identified as a key bottleneck, and rebalancing of airflow by managing air conditioning units improved the temperature distribution by 2℃ in return providing substantial headroom for optimising other cooling systems.
By fine-tuning the operation points of shared cooling infrastructure based on simulations and maintaining cooling water at an appropriate temperature, the project delivered a 2.3% energy reduction across the entire cooling system. In addition, the COP of the centrifugal chillers increased by more than 1.2 points.
This demonstration project was conducted in just one of the several server rooms in the data centre. When the scope is scaled across all the server rooms, cooling system energy savings are projected to reach 7.6%, significantly enhancing overall PUE.
“Operational data centres need to improve energy efficiency while utilising existing equipment,” said Shoji Yamasaki, MHI’s data centre and energy management department general manager. “This demonstration proves that system-level cooling optimisation, especially in multi-vendor environments, can deliver tangible results under real operating conditions.”
MHI says it intends to expand this approach, integrating decarbonised energy, resilient power systems, high-efficiency cooling, and advanced digital solutions to support sustainable and reliable data centre operations worldwide.
