Summary
- Telehouse and etalytics recorded a 10.4% electricity reduction on one cooling unit under live operating conditions.
- The optimisation used existing cooling and automation infrastructure rather than requiring wholesale plant replacement.
- A five-unit rollout is under way, with projected annual savings of about 497MWh if initial performance is replicated.
Telehouse Germany has recorded a 10.4% reduction in electricity consumption on one cooling unit at its Frankfurt data centre after applying software-led optimisation to existing cooling infrastructure.
The project, carried out with Darmstadt-based etalytics, operated under live data centre conditions and used the site’s existing cooling equipment and building-automation systems. Telehouse is now extending the optimisation approach across the remaining four units in the five-unit cooling system.
Based on the result achieved on the first unit, the companies project electricity savings of approximately 497MWh per year once the approach is applied across the complete system. They estimate that would correspond to roughly 180 tonnes of avoided carbon-dioxide emissions annually when calculated against the conventional German electricity mix.
Those full-system savings remain a projection rather than a measured annual result. The verified operational figure disclosed so far is the 10.4% reduction achieved on a single unit, making performance across the remaining cooling equipment the next test of whether the optimisation scales consistently.
The project is nevertheless notable because the reduction was achieved at an existing facility that etalytics describes as already well optimised. The work did not depend on replacing the cooling plant, which puts the emphasis on operating existing systems closer to their efficient envelope rather than relying on a major mechanical retrofit.
Cooling electricity remains one of the most accessible areas for efficiency work in conventional data centre facilities, particularly where multiple chillers, pumps, fans, heat exchangers, and control loops interact. Equipment may be individually efficient while the overall system still operates conservatively or inefficiently because fixed set points and control sequences cannot continuously account for changes in IT load and ambient conditions.
Optimisation software can target those relationships by adjusting operating parameters as conditions change. The engineering challenge is to make energy savings without reducing thermal margins or creating instability in systems supporting critical IT equipment.
That distinction becomes more important as facilities carry denser computing loads. Operators are increasingly being asked to accommodate higher rack power while keeping existing sites in service, and cooling upgrades can be constrained by plant-room space, electrical capacity, shutdown windows, and the cost of replacing mechanical equipment.
A software-led intervention therefore has appeal where it can produce measurable reductions without materially altering the physical plant. Its value, however, depends on the quality of sensors, controls, data, system integration, and the operating limits established by the facility team.
Telehouse and etalytics have not disclosed the total cooling-system consumption against which the 497MWh annual estimate is calculated, nor have they published enough information to translate the result into a site-wide PUE change. The announcement should therefore be read as a cooling-system result rather than a whole-facility efficiency benchmark.
The project has also received the Infrastructure Sustainability Award at the 2026 Platform Global Awards, although the more useful operational evidence will come from the continuing rollout across all five cooling units.
If the initial reduction is repeated across the full system, the Frankfurt deployment would demonstrate how existing facilities can extract additional cooling efficiency without waiting for complete plant replacement. As operators face higher compute densities and greater pressure on available electrical capacity, those incremental gains can preserve useful power for IT loads while postponing more capital-intensive upgrades.
