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DATA CENTRE FEATURE SERIES
COOLING STRATEGIES FOR AI- DRIVEN DATA CENTRES IN SA
By Ian MacDonald and Nancy Strangfeld( Data Centre Solutions( Pty) Ltd)
South Africa continues to anchor Africa’ s data centre growth, hosting a significant share of the continent’ s installed capacity and serving as a primary entry point for global cloud providers.
Data artificial centres intelligence
As AI-driven workloads accelerate, cooling strategies are becoming a central design and operational consideration rather than a supporting function. Industry analyses project continued expansion in IT load through to 2030, driven by cloud adoption, enterprise digital transformation and artificial intelligence. Johannesburg remains the dominant hub, while coastal locations such as Cape Town are gaining strategic importance due to connectivity advantages and renewable energy integration potential. 1, 2
The increasing adoption of AI is fundamentally reshaping data centre design. GPU-based processing, which is central to AI training and inference, introduces significantly higher power densities than traditional workloads, resulting in elevated heat generation and increased cooling demand. As facilities scale to accommodate these loads, cooling systems are becoming a critical determinant of both energy efficiency and operational expenditure. 3
NAVIGATING SOUTH AFRICAN REALITIES Designing data centre cooling systems in South Africa requires careful alignment with local environmental and infrastructure constraints. Seasonal temperature variability, water scarcity and ongoing grid instability necessitate solutions that prioritise resilience, resource efficiency and operational flexibility.
These conditions reinforce the continued relevance of precision air cooling systems, particularly in retrofit scenarios and medium-density environments. However, evolving performance requirements are driving optimisation through improved airflow management, containment strategies, variablespeed components and intelligent control systems capable of dynamically responding to real-time thermal loads.
ADVANCING COMPONENT AND CONTROL EFFICIENCY A defining trend in modern deployments is the transition toward electronically commutated( EC) fans and high-efficiency components, particularly within heat rejection systems. Compared to conventional AC alternatives, EC technologies enable finer control, reduced energy consumption and improved part-load performance.
RACA Journal I October 2026
Critically, system design is increasingly focused on part-load optimisation rather than peak capacity. By designing systems to be slightly over-specced, cooling infrastructure can operate within its most efficient performance envelope under typical conditions, improving reliability while reducing lifecycle energy consumption and still meeting peak application requirements.
In practice, many South African data centre projects achieve the greatest efficiency gains not through major equipment upgrades, but through improved control strategies and part-load optimisation of existing cooling systems.
MAXIMISING FREE COOLING POTENTIAL South Africa’ s climate provides meaningful opportunities for indirect and direct free cooling, particularly during cooler periods and at higher-altitude locations. Advanced control strategies can extend economiser operating hours, reducing reliance on mechanical cooling and directly improving Power Usage Effectiveness( PUE), a widely used metric of data centre energy efficiency.
Hybrid cooling architectures are gaining traction, combining air-based systems with targeted high-density solutions to maintain performance during peak thermal events while preserving overall efficiency.
THE ROLE OF LIQUID AND HYBRID COOLING As rack densities increase, liquid-assisted cooling is moving from niche application to strategic consideration. Industry analysis indicates that traditional air-cooling systems are approaching practical thermal limits under high-density GPU workloads, accelerating the adoption of liquid-based solutions. 4
Closed-loop liquid cooling systems, including direct-tochip and rear-door heat exchanger configurations, enable significantly higher heat transfer efficiency while minimising water consumption. In water-constrained environments such as South Africa, this makes liquid-assisted approaches particularly attractive when carefully engineered.
Importantly, these technologies are complementary rather than disruptive. In most deployments, hybrid architectures integrating both air and liquid cooling provide the flexibility required to support phased upgrades, mixed-density environments and evolving workload profiles.
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