美国多行业与电气设备：数据中心冷水机组，Chiller Gate风险真实程度如何

Data Center Chillers (2/3): How real is Chiller Gate risk? A few months ago, a statement by NVIDIA made a stir; they claimed current and newergeneration chips could be cooled at 450C (instead of traditional requirements closer to Varun Govindaraj+1 917 344 8543varun.govindaraj@bernsteinsg.com 300C).Aptly named “chiller gate”, the implication from this was that chillers would no longer be needed - being replaced by dry coolers that are far cheaper and less energyintensive to operate. This caused a stir in the share price of major chiller OEMs like TraneTechnologies, Carrier, and Johnson Controls. A few weeks ago, in Eaton’s earnings call,similar statements were made about reducing the number of chiller units deployed in data Stacy A. Rasgon, Ph.D.+1 213 559 5917stacy.rasgon@bernsteinsg.com Daniel Zhu+1 917 344 8309daniel.zhu@bernsteinsg.com First, there is the purely climatic angle - a problem of physics.We looked at hourlytemperature and humidity numbers for ~50 key data center markets, and then overlaidthat with scenarios of how the cooling ecosystem could evolve. Our broad takeawayfrom this was, based purely on climate data, you probably don’t need chillers to be the Alrick Shaw+1 917 344 8454alrick.shaw@bernsteinsg.com Arpad von Nemes+1 917 344 8461arpad.vonnemes@bernsteinsg.com true if you think CDU approach temperatures are going to reduce, and if NVIDIA’s 450 CTCS guideline can go even higher. However, that does not reflect ground reality of whathyperscalers and data center operators are trying to manage. And so there is the second angle one must consider - that of risk management.Here, we look at the probability and cost of failure, and compare that to the CapEx savings Steve Song+1 917 344 8401steve.song@bernsteinsg.com of using a dry cooler vs. a chiller. The reason we only take CapEx (and not also OpEx) isbecause most chillers today come with a free cooling mode (which levels the playing fieldbetween different types of equipment when the outside air is cold enough). Even whenwe are relatively generous with our assumptions in favor of dry coolers, we see that DC rack (which for NoVa is temperatures >380 C) but based on historical temperature patterns,NoVa has a 1.5% risk of seeing these temperatures at some point over that same period.For Vera Rubin racks, given the increased concentration of value, we believe acceptableprobabilities would be even lower. And as racks keep getting denser, who knows which way the 450 C TCS requirement can move. Especially if two-phase DTC struggles to seecommercialization (and the jury is still out on that), the easiest way for data center operatorsto cool their racks is to simply lower the temperature of the cooling loop (which absolutelyneeds a chiller). Building a full facility with dry coolers, and then retro-fitting it later with In summary, we believe the most likely outcome is that chillers are not goinganywhere.They may change their format to being “trim” units in some cases, but it does not seem like most OEMs make these units (if anything, they keep getting bigger). We sizethe chiller market at ~$8B fully loaded in 2026, and believe it can grow at ~20% annuallythrough 2030 assuming our thesis on chiller intensity laid out above holds true. This is the second article of our three part series on chillers.You can view the first part(where we discuss the broader primer and free cooling economics of air vs. water cooledchiller units) here. If you are unfamiliar with chillers, we recommend a quick skim. In our finalarticle, we will cover chiller service economics and how much is at risk from free cooling. BERNSTEIN TICKER TABLE INVESTMENT IMPLICATIONS We rate Vertiv Outperform, TP$416We rate nVent Outperform, TP$218We rate Johnson Controls Outperform, TP$176 DETAILS EXHIBIT 1:Chiller CapEx is tiny vs. the rack itself; and there’s a material tail-risk (~1.5%) risk that the rack overheats with a dry cooler if temperatures are toohigh Even in NoVa (which is pretty temperate), probability seems to dictate chillers come out ahead of dry coolers when factoring in riskU.S. MULTI INDUSTRY & ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT PERSPECTIVES ON FACILITY-LEVEL COOLING EQUIPMENT A few months ago, a statement by NVIDIA made a stir; they claimed current and newer generation chips could be cooled at450C (instead of traditional requirements closer to 300C). The implication was that chillers would no longer be needed - being replaced by dry coolers that are far cheaper and less energy intensive to operate. This caused a stir among major chiller playerslike Trane Technologies, Carrier, and Johnson Controls. A few weeks ago, in Eaton’s earnings call, similar statements were madeabout reducing the number of chiller units deployed in data centers, reigniting the debate. This is true if you take a pure climatic How does the equipment work? First, it is worth understanding why we are even talking about chillers vs. dry coolers. To do so, we must contrast how a water-coo