The data center market is heating up. Traditional cooling methods are being quickly outpaced and even modern solutions must evolve rapidly to keep up with rising rack densities, higher power demands, and the ever-growing heat outputs of today’s digital infrastructure.

To meet these demands while also preparing for future growth, cooling systems require a strategic edge. That’s where digital technologies come in. Fast, seamless, and intelligent cooling management is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s mission-critical.

With decades of experience in the global HVAC space, Belimo has been applying its specialized knowledge to the data center industry for over 20 years. From damper actuators and control valves to sensors, the company has innovated continuously to meet evolving cooling needs.

Now, as the industry shifts into high gear and the pace of deployment accelerates, Belimo is focused on developing digital technologies that streamline and optimize cooling for modern operations.

Tom Daenzer, digital business development manager and business line manager of digital ecosystems at Belimo Americas, explores why smart, connected solutions are today’s must-haves.

A holistic approach

Today’s facilities aren’t just bigger – they’re faster and denser too. Cooling systems must not only keep up with higher loads, but with dynamic fluctuations in compute demands.

“At this point, the ideal liquid cooling solution delivers design flow at all times,” explains Daenzer. “Even if a server is running at 10 percent load, you still have to deliver 100 percent design cooling to the valve. The mechanical systems simply can’t react fast enough to match load variations.”

This is where traditional cooling optimization strategies fall short. What’s needed is real-time orchestration between IT and mechanical infrastructure – a true integration of compute demand and cooling delivery.

“That’s why we emphasize a holistic system approach,” says Daenzer. “Instead of mechanical systems saying, ‘We’ll just give you full flow no matter what,’ you create a synchronized architecture that flexes intelligently with demand.”

Belimo is supporting this effort through its partnership with the Center for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems (ES2) – a specialized network of universities and industry leaders collaborating on energy-optimized data center technologies. This kind of academic-industry alliance is helping to turn innovation into real-world, practical applications, faster.

Modular thinking, scalable results

Speed isn’t just about how fast systems can operate – it’s also about how quickly solutions can be deployed, reconfigured, or scaled.

“In the HVAC world, adoption of new technology moves at a snail’s pace when compared to the data center industry,” says Daenzer. “Here, there’s constant pressure to innovate and look at what’s coming next in order to stay ahead of the curve.”

The fast-paced urgency that characterizes the data center space today has been a key validation for Belimo’s new modular design approach – a decision the company made over five years ago that’s now proving to be a critical advantage.

Modularity exists across multiple aspects of the data center. At the facility level, it might mean prefabricated cooling blocks that can be slotted into place quickly on site. But at the system level, it means being able to combine mechanical and digital components rapidly during manufacturing, significantly shortening time-to-market.

“We can pair one digital component with hundreds of mechanical configurations,” explains Daenzer. “That lets us scale a new technology across our entire platform with a single digital update.”

This forward-thinking approach also boosts scalability: “One customer might install a valve today for a server needing 100 liters per minute,” continues Daenzer. “Two years from now, they might need 200 liters. If the valve is properly sized, it’s just a matter of reconfiguring software – not replacing hardware.”

A crucial advantage of electronic pressure-independent valves is the ability to support evolving requirements without costly retrofits. And for situations where one valve isn’t enough, Belimo is working to develop systems that allow multiple valves to operate in parallel, acting as a unified, modular solution.

“That gives customers a path to scale their systems while protecting their initial investment,” explains Daenzer. “They don’t have to throw everything out and start over.”

The complete package

When delivering innovation at scale, the way that solution is packaged, presented, and deployed matters. Pre-configured, integrated cooling solutions reduce design complexity, installation time, and costs.

“It’s something that’s been made very clear by our own customers and across the industry: packaged solutions are the way forward,” explains Daenzer. “They enable faster setup, simpler scaling, and improved efficiency across the board.”

Belimo’s answer is its flagship Energy Valve – a pressure-independent control valve that provides immense control flexibility using multiple precision sensors and offers an array of integration options.

The Belimo Energy Valve uses an inline, glycol-compensated flow meter to assess flow accuracy regardless of fluid properties. Combined with temperature sensors on the supply and return lines, the valve continuously calculates energy transfer efficiency and power consumption – delivering actionable insights directly to cooling or rack management platforms.

“You can control the Energy Valve in multiple ways,” adds Daenzer. “Whether you need position control, flow control, or you want to maintain differential pressure across the rack, the flexibility is there. And all of the telemetry data is available through BACnet, Modbus, or RESTful API.”

Crucially, the Energy Valve can operate autonomously. Once configured with a design setpoint – whether for flow, pressure, or energy – it performs closed-loop control without operators having to lift a finger.

From a digital standpoint, Daenzer encourages users to leverage IP-based communication protocols for even better performance and security: “Modbus RTU (remote terminal unit) has its place, but for high-performance applications, IP is the future-proof answer.”

Providing visibility

Effective cooling must start with visibility. More than ever, operators require clear, real-time data to understand when systems are performing as expected and quickly identify potential issues as they arise.

“Reliable, verifiable performance at the device level is critical,” says Daenzer. “Every device that’s cooling or supplying power must be managed in a streamlined, integrated way.”

Traditional monitoring solutions are ill-equipped to meet the pace and scale of modern data centers. That’s why Belimo will be adopting Redfish – a control and monitoring API developed by the DMTF (formerly known as the Distributed Management Task Force). Unlike legacy protocols such as Modbus or BACnet, Redfish enables IT-centric, standardized device management that can scale easily across hundreds – or thousands – of endpoints.

“Today, managing every device in a cooling system individually can be a monumental task,” explains Daenzer. “Redfish simplifies this by offering a common platform for management systems to configure and monitor devices in real-time, while offering enterprise services to roll out firmware updates across an entire system.”

To support this shift, Belimo has developed a smart platform across all its products. Built with a purpose-designed operating system, the platform enables greater agility, security, and speed in integrating digital cooling controls across multiple facility systems.

Too hot to handle

Even with today’s innovative cooling solutions, the unrelenting upward curve of data center capacity means that physical and thermal limits are fast approaching. In particular, single-phase cooling – where glycol-based fluids like PG25 are the industry norm – is at risk of being outpaced.

“At some point, single-phase cooling reaches a ceiling,” says Daenzer. “The density just keeps going up, and you can only push so much fluid through small heat exchangers.”

In response, the industry is starting to turn toward two-phase cooling, which utilizes phase change to dramatically boost heat transfer capacity – offering greater efficiency within the same physical footprint.

“Some of our customers are already preparing for that shift,” notes Daenzer. “Even when they’re just using our Energy Valve as a simple open-close isolation valve, they still want access to detailed flow, temperature, and pressure data.”

And that’s the crux – data access. Whether for basic control or sophisticated analytics, Belimo’s digitally enabled components ensure operators can monitor, verify, and optimize their systems at pace and with confidence.

“They’re getting that information in a format that’s secure, standardized, and IT-friendly,” says Daenzer. “That makes the transition to new cooling technologies much smoother when the time comes.”

As cooling loads rise and system complexity grows, the industry can’t afford to rely on mechanical solutions alone. Digital technologies are enabling not just rapid scaling and seamless management – but the right kind of growth: intelligent, secure, and adaptable.

With the mechanics tried and true, it’s digital technologies and innovators like Belimo that are paving the way for the future of cooling – one Energy Valve at a time.

For more information, please visit belimo.com/datacenters