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.

  1. 3d ago

    Dirt to Data - Ep 13 - Building a Gigawatt Campus Next to a Retired Coal Plant with Gordon and Cindy Baier of Gigawatt Land

    A coal plant in northern Arizona once employed about a thousand people before it shut down. Gordon and Cindy Baier are building a multi-gigawatt energy and data center campus next to it. Eric and Lance sit down with the show’s first married couple. Gordon is a German energy engineer and Cindy is a former science teacher. They met in Berlin, and on a 2015 Arizona road trip Gordon spotted high voltage lines in the middle of nowhere. After screening more than 30 sites nationwide, they chose Gigawatt Land, up to 100,000 acres near Holbrook. Gordon explains same point interconnection, a planned 25-mile redundancy ring, and energy storage that can’t catch fire. The couple describes a campus built as a circular economy. Data center heat and turbine CO2 will feed a neighboring algae farm, raised solar panels will shade grazing cattle, and the data centers will sit out of view in earth-toned buildings under protected night skies. Cindy closes with advice for women entering the industry. Go for it, learn the material, and believe in yourself. If you use your phone, you use a data center. Get to know what’s good and what’s bad. More at https://dirttodatapodcast.com

  2. Oct 26

    Dirt to Data - Ep # 12 - The paper mill that heated itself with Bitcoin miners, with Steve Wood of Keystone

    Steve Wood ran 2 MW of Bitcoin miners in the basement of a closed paper mill and piped their heat into a 600,000 square foot building. The mill stopped buying 200,000 gallons of propane a winter. Now he’s building AI data centers on the same idea. Eric Sonner and Lance Teel talk with the Idaho farm kid turned Keystone founder about auditing at Coopers & Lybrand, 13 years building plants for Pyrotek, and the 2016 Bitcoin pitch his paper mill turned down. Then they get into industrial symbiosis. Liquid cooling captures about 75 percent of a data center’s heat today, so a 100 MW site has roughly 70 MW to give to greenhouses, fish hatcheries or a town pool. Steve explains why you ask the community what it wants before you build, and what he’s planning on 200 MW at Gigawatt Land with Gordon Baier. Plus karaoke in Japan, career advice for the next generation of builders, and Steve’s charity pick, Tip of the Spear.

  3. Oct 19

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 11 - How We Break Data Centers Before They Go Live w/ Mitch Dec of Data Airflow

    Before a data center runs a single AI workload, somebody has to try to break it. Mitch Dec is that somebody. Eric and Lance sit down with Mitch Dec, VP of Commercial Services at Data Airflow, who leads commissioning on some of the largest AI data centers in America. Mitch walks through commissioning from Level 0 to Level 5, from factory testing to cutting power on purpose to prove the backup paths work. He also explains how to test a direct-to-chip AI hall before any servers arrive. The water discussion covers the energy and water tradeoff, how new refrigerants let closed loop systems match open loop efficiency, why the glycol in these systems is food grade and not a forever chemical, and the payback that convinces investors. Plus how Mitch and Eric went from a phone call to a signed proposal in under 36 hours, a 500 person town hall in Appalachia, and why your power bill may have gone up years before the data center arrived. Mitch’s advice closes the show. Every degree has a place in this industry, and so do the trades. 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/N7zhj4MhEOg More at https://dcipodcast.com

  4. Oct 12

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 10 - AI Pods and Internet Exchanges with Bryan Lubin of Moonshot

    Training AI happens in giant campuses. Inference, the next wave, needs compute close to the people using it, and many states don’t have the network to support it. Recorded in Austin, Eric and Lance sit down with Bryan Lubin of Moonshot Energy, a former private banker and chief credit officer who now underwrites power, land, and compute. Bryan explains the infranet. Moonshot and Connected Nation Internet Exchange Points are deploying modular AI pods next to internet exchange points at university campuses, starting at 25 sites and scaling to 125. In states without a local exchange, traffic travels hundreds of miles before it’s answered. For self-driving trucks and robotics, that delay is a serious problem. Plus what modular should mean (precast concrete pods, not metal boxes), closed loop cooling built with Data Airflow, sites under five megawatts, a six to eight month timeline from dirt to data, and why OEMs now want proof a site is ready before they ship servers. Bryan’s advice closes the show. Be who you are, stay focused, and expect to fail. That’s how you learn. 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/zArAps8I-y4More at https://dcipodcast.com

  5. Oct 5

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 9 - Dell's David Holmes on the Data Center-Aware Grid

    AI data centers swing their power draw by tens of megawatts in seconds, and the grid wasn't built for it. David Holmes, Global Industries CTO for Energy at Dell Technologies, sits down with Eric Sonner and Lance Teel in Austin to talk about what it takes to fix that. David covers why AI loads are so hard on generators and transformers, how long-duration flow batteries buffer a data center from the grid, and where stranded power is hiding at substations and in half-empty buildings. He lays out his nine-box framework for deciding where AI workloads should run, explains sovereign AI, and makes the case that PUE is only half the scorecard. Tokens per watt is the other half. Then he gets into Concept Astro, Dell's proof of concept for a grid-aware AI factory, and the bigger idea behind it, a grid that's aware of its data centers. The conversation closes on ERCOT's Batch Zero process, what makes a good grid citizen, and why physical AI is the next shift to watch. Concept Astro white paper https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/solutions/business-solutions/industry-market/concept-astro-whitepaper.pdf David Holmes on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/energygm/ Hosted by Eric Sonner, CEO of Data Airflow, and Lance Teel of Atlas Energy.

  6. Sep 28

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 8 - The Battery That Turns Data Centers Into Grid Assets

    A normal data center battery buys you 10 minutes. This one runs for 10 hours, can't catch fire, and can turn a data center into a power plant for its neighbors. Recording in Dallas, Eric and Lance sit down with Jeff Goldberg, Chief Development Officer and co-founder of TerraFlow Energy, maker of vanadium flow batteries that work as a power hub. Every source a site has flows through the battery, the data center draws from the battery, and the chemistry absorbs AI load volatility in milliseconds while protecting equipment on both sides. Jeff breaks down the numbers. 250 megawatt hours on under an acre, an electrolyte that's 75 percent water with no lithium fire risk, a 20 to 30 year life filled once, and simultaneous charge and discharge. With 10 plus hours of storage, a data center can carry itself through peak hours and push power back to the grid. In Jeff's words, you turn a data center into a peaker plant. The vampire becomes a blood donor. Plus the origin story, a real estate developer, his metal fabricator tenant Jon Parrella, and two words that started it all. I'm in. Five founders, 59 employees in two years, and a factory opening in Katy, Texas. Jeff's advice closes the show. Get an internship. The industry needs you. 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/DV-diphbD98⁠⁠ More at ⁠⁠https://dcipodcast.com

  7. Sep 21

    Data Center Infrastructure Podcast - Ep 7 - Sovereign AI and Europe's Data Center Wave

    When Gary Wojtaszek got into data centers, 10 megawatts was enormous. Now he builds gigawatt digital factories. Eric and Lance sit down with Gary "Wojo" Wojtaszek, Executive Chairman of Pure Data Centres Group and former CEO of CyrusOne, which he took public and scaled into one of the largest operators in the world. Wojo traces the industry's whole arc, from finding a data center business hiding inside Cincinnati Bell, to the manufacturing mindset that delivered 30 megawatts in six months, to the retirement that turned into RecNation, America's largest RV and boat storage platform. The heart of the episode is sovereign AI. Europe watched the AI wave land in America and Southeast Asia, and now nations are racing to build their own infrastructure so their data and national security don't depend on anyone else. Wojo explains why the US and Europe capacity gap has never been wider, and what Pure DC's community first rollout in Seinäjoki, Finland, with university partnerships and a planned AI incubator for local kids, says about how this industry should show up everywhere. Plus, data centers as shock absorbers for the grid, the trillion dollar capital allocation era, a leadership tree that has produced eight CEOs, and the quote that closes the show. You can never beat a man who doesn't quit. 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/gyBvtEWDdKcMore at https://dcipodcast.com

  8. Sep 14

    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

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About

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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