Nortek Data Center Cooling’s custom solutions are a breath of fresh air in the data center landscape
Nortek Data Center Cooling (Nortek DCC) empowers its customers to achieve unprecedented accomplishments by developing and manufacturing cutting-edge data center cooling solutions that eliminate downtime, maximize efficiency and lower environmental impact. Through its above-industry standards, the company paves the way for a sustainable and efficient path to innovation. At its core, Nortek DCC is committed to challenging industry standards, which in turn enables its customers to change the world. Karin Overstreet, President, tells us more about the company’s history and role in the ever-evolving data center sector.
“Part of the large and privately held Madison Air, Nortek DCC focuses exclusively on supporting data centers. For over a decade, we have optimized our products for the industry, providing both liquid, air, and hybrid cooling solutions. Because no two data centers are the same, we partner with our customers across the entire lifecycle, from design to delivery, commissioning, and ongoing service, bringing tailored innovation every step of the way. In terms of our manufacturing footprint, we operate facilities in Oklahoma City and Dyersburg, Tennessee. Our engineering team brings deep data center expertise and understands the complex demands of designing these highly specialized environments. That insight allows us to collaborate closely with our customers to develop cooling solutions – both custom and configurable – that reduce power and water usage while improving the sustainability footprint of the data center,” she opens.
Nortek DCC combines a commitment to efficiency with deep engineering expertise to deliver cooling solutions tailored to each data center’s specific requirements. “After more than ten years in this market, our heritage is rooted in delivering custom air handling solutions and liquid cooling systems. Every solution is custom built. We use modular building blocks within our cooling systems to tailor each design to the unique demands of the project; never a one-size-fits-all approach. Among our signature offerings is the hybrid fluid cooling plant, StatePoint®, which serves as a primary cooling solution by rejecting heat from the data center. Additionally, we provide a full range of solutions designed to cool the servers within the facility. While some of our competitors offer more standardization or a broader range of digital infrastructure solutions, we specialize exclusively in cooling, striving to meet our customers precisely where they need us. Our goal is to develop solutions that align with the use case and geographical requirements of each data center.
“Cooling is mission critical in the data center, and it often accounts for up to 40 percent of a facility’s total energy consumption. Consequently, we continually seek ways to enhance energy efficiency. This includes addressing water usage, whether through liquid cooling or our hybrid fluid cooling plant. I believe that as an industry, we must persist in exploring methods to drive efficiency across the data center landscape. Currently, our focus is on speeding up deployment to support the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI). However, we remain committed to ensuring that our solutions are sustainable as we move forward,” Karin elaborates.
Over the last few months, Nortek DCC has launched a new solution set to make a significant impact in the market. Karin sheds light on the purpose of this system and the benefits it will bring to the sector. “Our innovation is rooted in the highly collaborative relationships we build with our customers. As such, we recently introduced what we call a skidded Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU), which is a larger cooling capacity unit that ranges from two to ten megawatts. This CDU is
specifically designed to support customers who are currently building gigawatt campuses that require more efficient cooling solutions, particularly for liquid cooling or direct-to-chip cooling in AI-driven data centers. The expansion of our CDU family was driven by our commitment to meet these emerging needs. Designed to be installed in mechanical rooms, these CDUs boost cost-effectiveness per kilowatt, and reduce redundancy needs. By connecting our skidded CDUs together into a cohesive system, we provide a more cost-effective cooling solution, while minimizing the redundancy typically required across the data center.”
With the rapid rise of AI, the market has evolved tremendously in recent years, prompting many suppliers, including Nortek DCC, to embrace these changes and transform their business strategies to address the increased demand. “There are a couple of trends we have noticed. One is the shift from air cooling to liquid cooling as the primary solution, driven by the increasing power of chips, higher heat loads, and greater rack densities. Direct-to-chip liquid cooling was once reserved for high-performance computing (HPC). Now it’s central to AI data center design. With deep experience in HPC environments, we’ve seamlessly aligned with this shift, delivering the CDUs and expertise these builds demand. Another important trend is the accelerating speed at which these data centers are being constructed. This rapid pace requires us to be more and more creative, agile, and adaptable based on our customers’ build strategies. Historically, data centers were located primarily in major cities – but today, larger AI campuses are shifting to rural areas, driven by land availability and access to affordable power. This shift requires us to develop more solution-based equipment, especially as the industry faces a widespread shortage of engineering talent. Thus, much of this work is being done in our factories, allowing us to provide more holistic solutions rather than just individual components or pieces of equipment.”
Through close collaboration with leading technology and infrastructure partners like Siemens, the company ensures its systems deliver the performance, integration, and reliability needed to support today’s most demanding AI and hyperscale data centers.
As the data center industry continues to evolve at record pace, Nortek DCC stays focused on driving cooling innovation that powers progress. Backed by decades of engineering expertise and a commitment to sustainability, the company is redefining data center performance and helping the world’s most advanced operators stay cool under pressure.