In collaboration with universities, industry and the public sector, RISE conducts industrial research and innovation, with the overall goal of driving sustainable growth by strengthening competitiveness and renewing industry.
Through the partnership with RISE, Vertiv will specifically support the Infrastructure and Cloud Research and Test Environment (ICE), which is a data center testbed that provides access to study results and experts, as well as RISE publications and demonstrations and participation in small research and development studies.
One of the main values brought to the partners of the collaboration is the large-scale testing environment with data center modules, climate and thermal boxes, wind tunnels, peripheral and liquid cooling test benches, and the ability to take simulations and concepts to the point of conducting demonstrations and tests for data collection and analysis.
“RISE demonstrates its technological leadership in applied research, making it a perfect partner for Vertiv. This will help us lead the industry in the new era of large-scale, sustainable cloud data centers and enterprise and remote applications,” said Vertiv CTO Stephen Liang.
“RISE is playing a leading role in driving sustainability across Europe, and Vertiv is ideally positioned to provide it with forward-thinking engineering solutions for the data center sector and many others,” said Giordano Albertazzi, President of Vertiv for the EMEA region. “Data centers are a critical part of the digital infrastructure. Efficiency and sustainability are key strengths for the sector and are becoming increasingly important. New technologies, system solutions, and components must be conceived, developed, tested, and verified before being released to the market. We believe our partnership with RISE plays a vital role in this process.”.
Vertiv also supports RISE's multiple heat recovery initiatives, which utilize rejected heat from data centers for diverse applications, such as mealworm and vertical farming, biomass drying, and district heating systems. A recent feasibility study aims to achieve a supply water temperature of 90-95°C for district heating. Other Vertiv and RISE research projects include load balancing, full lifecycle assessments of data centers and all their components, machine learning for homomorphic encryption, autonomous digital infrastructure and self-healing systems, fuel cells, a digital carbon meter for end users, novel cooling methods, and thermal management systems that promote heat reuse and the circular economy.
“We want to get closer to the needs of the sector, and a partnership contributes to dialogue and direct bilateral collaboration. In this way, we can continue developing our specialized publications hand in hand with our partners,” says Tor Björn Minde, director of the RISE ICE Data Center.
The collaboration with RISE is the latest in a series of advancements Vertiv has made regarding sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in general. Vertiv is a member of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) and the European Data Center Association (EUDCA) , and contributes to the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact to meet the European Commission's goal of climate-neutral data centers by 2030. Vertiv and RISE are also members of the E2P2 Technology Consortium, which is leading the development of low-carbon fuel cells to power data centers.
