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Data Center Infrastructure Podcast

Data Airflow

Welcome to the Data Center Infrastructure Podcast.

Every data center starts as a piece of dirt with a power line and a dream. Eric Sonner (Data Airflow) and Lance Teel (Atlas Energy) launch the Data Center Infrastructure Podcast and walk you through the part of the AI buildout almost nobody explains, the mechanical systems that keep billions of dollars of compute alive. New episodes every Monday. The Data Center Infrastructure Podcast is brought to you by Data Airflow, mechanical engineering, procurement, and commissioning for hyperscale AI and HPC data centers.

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  • 6 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 42 min
  • English

Episodes 6

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  • Monday · 29 min

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 6 - Saving Water Via Desalination with Nona Technologies

    About a third of the water a traditional cooling tower consumes never cools anything. This episode is about the machine that fixes that. Recording at the Future Bridge High Density Power Conference in Dallas, Eric and Lance meet their first walk up guest. Bruce Crawford, CEO and co-founder of Nona Technologies, an MIT spinout that started with briefcase-sized units turning seawater into drinking water for the military and now builds refrigerator-sized units that can cut a data center's water consumption roughly in half, counting both the site and the power plant behind it. Bruce breaks down cycles of concentration, and the third of tower water sacrificed down the drain, the electrode process that recovers around 90 percent against 65 for comparable reverse osmosis, and the retrofit that installs without shutting the system down. Plus the dry cooling trap that pushes water consumption over the fence to the power plant, Scope 1 and Scope 2 water accounting, and the brackish groundwater under more than half of America that turns unbuildable land into data center sites. Also, Eric's son blaming him for a naturally dry Arizona riverbed, the Lake Ontario build that touches zero lake water, and Bruce's advice for young people. Work on something that matters. If you use your phone, you use a data center. Get to know what's good and what's bad. More at https://dcipodcast.com

  • September 7 · 34 min

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 5 - Microreactors and the Future of Data Center Power

    A nuclear reactor that fits in a shipping container, built on an assembly line, and sold out through 2035. Recording on the road at the Future Bridge High Density Power Conference, Eric and Lance sit down with Richard Gaut, CFO of Deployable Energy, maker of a one megawatt microreactor. Eric discloses up front that he's an angel investor, then Richard explains why nuclear's problem was never the physics, it was the construction. Factory built reactors, the new NRC Part 57 rules written for them, and the Department of Energy race that got their unit critical before July 4th after entering a 400 day challenge on day 250. Plus what walk away safe means, proven at the Idaho National Lab by draining the coolant at full power and watching the reactor calmly shut itself down. Why the system uses no water. The 60 acre gigawatt, delivered in 200 megawatt phases. And the island nations burning diesel for half their power, where one container of uranium plus waste heat desalination changes everything. Richard's advice for young people closes the show. The white collar or bust path was dead wrong, and most people have no concept of what enables their lifestyle. If you use your phone, you use a data center. Get to know what's good and what's bad. Watch on YouTube. https://youtu.be/Ou-r1Ejr_Qk More at https://dcipodcast.com

  • S1 · E4
    August 31 · 1 hr 2 min

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 4 - SB6, Batch Zero, and Texas Grid Power Explained

    Texas hit pause on the biggest data center buildout in history, and this episode explains why. Lance and Eric welcome their first remote guest, Del Hilber of Atlas Energy Solutions, who brings 25 years in energy markets, from the Constellation trading floor in the Enron era to running one of the largest demand response portfolios in North America. Professor Del, as Lance calls him, breaks down Senate Bill 6 and the Batch Zero process, the new rules deciding which of the hundreds of gigawatts waiting to connect to the Texas grid are real and which are phantom loads, and what the governor's early August pause means for water disclosure, community outreach, and every project in the queue. Plus, what a negawatt is, the Northern Virginia grid scare that rippled toward Chicago, why bridge power echoes the steel mills of the 1940s, cogeneration and using engine heat for cooling, and the PUE math where five saved megawatts is worth hundreds of millions. Del's advice for the next generation closes the show. Find a mentor, and judge people by the company they keep. If you use your phone, you use a data center. Get to know what's good and what's bad. More at https://dcipodcast.com

  • S1 · E3
    August 25 · 56 min

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 3 - Why AI Data Centers Are Leaving the Grid w/ Jake Corley

    The line for grid power in Texas has grown past 400 gigawatts. Jake Corley decided to skip the line entirely. In episode three of the Data Center Infrastructure Podcast, Lance Teel and Eric Sonner sit down with Jake Corley, Marine Corps veteran and founder of Corley Energy, who is building off grid data center infrastructure on a West Texas site so remote he calls it Wile E. Coyote territory. No municipal water. No local rates to affect. No neighbors. And natural gas so abundant that producers were at times paying to get rid of it, now locked up on long term contracts and turned into AI compute. This is the island power episode, and it covers the biggest shift happening in the industry right now. Why connection queues and multi year timelines are pushing builders to generate their own power. How stranded Permian gas became the cheapest energy in America. Why the most worthless land in Texas suddenly became the most valuable, with fiber fast enough to reach Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio in a few milliseconds. And what sovereignty means when the compute inside the building is the bulk of the entire investment. The guys also get into the PUE numbers that separate world class sites from everyone else, and why moving from 1.36 to 1.23 is worth billions. Why air cooling posts great numbers but can't keep up now that racks have jumped from 4 kilowatts to 200 and beyond. The CapEx versus OpEx trade off behind hundreds of billions in annual buildout. Plus the butterfly effect story of how one conference afterparty in the back of a Yukon XL launched Data Airflow into building some of the biggest data centers in the world, and a pitch Eric will never forget, a data center on an Alaskan volcanic island that erupts every 30 years. Jake's path here says as much as the site does. Marine Corps, no college, oil and gas, a media company built as a hobby, and a conference that changed the trajectory of half the people in this industry. His advice for young people closes the show. The world belongs to the curious. You don't need permission. You can just go do things.If you use your phone, you use a data center. This show exists to help you understand what's good, what's bad, and what it takes to build them right.New episodes every couple of weeks. Subscribe and turn on notifications. Website: https://dcipodcast.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/data-center-infrastructure-podcast/id6799820255 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0344qx3SJhse3TFPCHDyJc The Data Center Infrastructure Podcast is presented by Data Airflow, mechanical engineering, procurement, and commissioning for hyperscale AI and HPC data centers.

  • S1 · E2
    August 17 · 45 min

    From Bitcoin Chicken Coops to Billion Dollar AI Data Centers

    Lance and Eric welcome their first guest, Josh Bennett, COO of Data Airflow, fresh off a three week road trip through four data center sites in upstate New York, Kentucky, and the Permian Basin. Josh shares his path from a warehouse job at 17, no college, to running commissioning operations on billion dollar builds, and explains the least understood job in the industry. His teams try to break data centers on purpose, with load banks and test scripts, proving every backup system works before the servers arrive. From the road, the guys cover the half gigawatt AI campus rising where an aluminum smelter died 15 years ago, the cleanup nobody else would have done, the Bitcoin mining chicken coop days the industry grew out of, a West Texas town of 900 transformed by its tax base, and the closed loop water misconception almost everyone gets wrong. Plus the Wyoming fill and flush story that became a cautionary tale for the whole industry, and why the talent shortage in the trades may be a bigger constraint than power.If you use your phone, you use a data center. Get to know what's good and what's bad. More at https://dcipodcast.com

  • #1
    August 10 · 24 min

    From Dirt to Data: Why Cooling Decides Who Wins the AI Race

    Somewhere in America, a piece of dirt is about to become a data center. Eric Sonner (Data Airflow) and Lance Teel (Atlas Energy) kick off the Data Center Infrastructure Podcast with the part of the story nobody tells, the cooling, power, and mechanical systems that stand between raw land and racks of live compute. Eric explains how his team sizes cooling for a 200 megawatt building the size of two Costcos, why closed loop systems work like the radiator in your car, and how a brackish water project in West Texas turned a better PUE into 15 years of added compute value. Lance covers the power crunch, secured genset capacity, and why the industry has moved from a server shortage to a power shortage to a fight for public trust. They also get into thermal storage tanks, chiller lead times stretching past a year, the difference between AI factory and enterprise cloud redundancy, and why the water math on a modern data center looks more like a McDonald's than a reservoir. The Data Center Infrastructure Podcast is brought to you by Data Airflow, mechanical engineering, procurement, and commissioning for hyperscale AI and HPC data centers. New episodes every Monday. Listen to wherever you get your podcasts Available now on YouTube - Search "Data Center Infrastructure Podcast"

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