Panasonic has opened European order books for liquid cooling equipment aimed at generative AI data centres, listing two coolant distribution units rated at 400kW and 800kW and two free-cooling chillers rated at 800kW and 1,200kW. The company says its Heating & Ventilation A/C Company began accepting orders in the European market from March 4, 2026. Larger CDUs of 1,200kW and above are still in development, with order acceptance scheduled to begin within March 2026.
The important line for anyone sizing a hall is what kind of CDU this is. Panasonic describes units that perform heat exchange and distribute coolant using chilled water supplied by chillers, which makes them liquid to liquid rather than self-contained. They do not make cold. They hand heat from the rack loop to a chilled water plant that has to exist already, or be bought alongside them.
That puts the buying decision one level up from the CDU itself. Panasonic came into European data centre cooling through its 2023 purchase of Systemair AB's commercial air-conditioning business, a 100 million euro deal that closed at the end of February 2023 and brought in Tecnair S.p.A., which builds the close control units used on the air side. The pitch now is that one supplier covers both the air-cooled legacy and the liquid-cooled racks going in beside it.
Capacity is where the two lines fail to meet. The largest chiller listed is rated at 1,200kW and the largest CDU available to order is rated at 800kW, so a site specifying at the top of the chiller range cannot yet buy a matching Panasonic CDU to sit under it. That gap closes only if the 1,200kW and above units arrive on the schedule given.
The chillers carry a free-cooling function that uses low outdoor temperatures, which Panasonic puts at up to 10 degrees Celsius, to generate chilled water. The refrigerant is R1234ze(E), which the company lists at a global warming potential of 1, and these models are aimed at small and medium facilities including edge sites rather than at hyperscale halls.
Several things a buyer would need are absent. Panasonic states no approach temperature, no primary or secondary loop water temperatures, no flow rates and no pressure drop, and a CDU rated in kilowatts means very little without them, because the same box moves very different amounts of heat at a 5 degree approach and a 15 degree one. There is no price, no lead time, no delivery date beyond the opening of orders, no redundancy configuration, no form factor and no statement of which cold plates or rack manifolds the units have been qualified against. The countries covered by the European market are not listed.
Two vendor claims arrive without figures. Panasonic says the combination enables significant power savings and reduces the overall system footprint required to achieve the same cooling capacity, and attaches no percentage, no baseline and no methodology to either. Nor does the release say whether the 10 degree threshold delivers full or partial free cooling, or what water temperature the chillers produce at that ambient.
For buyers already running Tecnair close control units in European halls, this turns a single-vendor air-side relationship into one that can cover the liquid loop as well, at capacities suited to colocation and edge sites more than to gigawatt campuses. The specifications that would let anyone compare it against an incumbent CDU are not in the announcement, and until Panasonic publishes approach temperatures and flow rates the kilowatt ratings cannot be read across to another supplier's sheet.
Leave a Reply