Precision instrumentation is making KSA's data centres more sustainable

As the Kingdom rapidly advances its digital infrastructure, the surging energy demand poses new challenges. However, scale without precision can become a liability, Jay Gadhavi tells OGN

- BY ABDULAZIZ KHATTAK

SAUDI Arabia is in the middle of a once-in-a-generation data centre build-out; Al training clusters, sovereign clouds, hyperscale campuses and edge facilities are moving from design phase to live operations in record time.

The scale is unprecedented. The Middle East's total capacity will triple from around 1 GW in 2025 to 3.3 GW within five years.

For Saudi Arabia, that growth includes AWS's $5.3 billion investment, MIS's planned 112-MW capacity expansion, and DataVolt's 1.5-GW Already campus at NEOM's Oxagon (powered largely by renewables).

But these facilities come with enormous energy and cooling demands. The International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that global data centre electricity consumption could more than double to 945 TWh by 2030, driven heavily by Al workloads.

Rack densities of 20-30 kW and above are becoming the norm, pushing liquid-cooling systems to the forefront, and making accurate measurement of flows, temperatures and energy transfer essential for both operational reliability and sustainability.

"The scale of Saudi Arabia's digital expansion is extraordinary, but scale without precision can become a liability. The real opportunity is to embed high-accuracy measurement from the very start, so that data centres not only perform, but prove their efficiency every single day," Jay Gadhavi, General Manager, KROHNE Middle East & Africa, tells OGN energy magazine.

MEASUREMENT IS FIRST STEP TOWARD EFFICIENCY

Too often, efficiency is treated as something added after commissioning. In reality, sustainability is locked in during the design stage.

When operators specify high-accuracy metering-flow, temperature, and thermal energy-from day one, they gain the ability to optimise continuously, diagnose root causes quickly, and produce auditable performance data for customers, regulators, and investors.