It is no secret that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining our future. As data centers multiply to meet society’s appetite for rapid data processing and storage, the industry faces a critical challenge: how to scale infrastructure while sustainably managing energy, water and building resources.
At Stanley Consultants, we have spent decades mastering the intricate relationship between these three essential elements and have evolved our expertise to meet current demand and market dynamics. Our unique cross-market expertise in building systems, energy and water infrastructure provides us with key insights that help clients navigate today’s most pressing data center challenges: power availability and grid constraints, water scarcity and cooling requirements, talent shortages and supply chain constraints.
The Data Center Challenge: Where Worlds Collide
Modern data centers operate at the convergence of three critical infrastructure systems, each presenting distinct challenges that demand specialized expertise:
- Energy Infrastructure: With a deep understanding of power generation, substations, and transmission and distribution systems, we understand the complex energy demands facing the data center industry. According to Bloomberg, AI power demand is expected to surge to 106 gigawatts by 2035, fueling rapid data center development nationwide. Our comprehensive energy infrastructure services include transmission capacity studies, interconnection applications, site layout development, permit coordination and owner’s engineer services, including for Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) portfolios and large-scale solar PV projects. We also support clients with design development, contractor procurement and technical oversight through construction, commissioning and performance testing. With proven experience as the Engineer of Record for projects up to 175 MW and management of BESS portfolios exceeding 2,000 MWh, Stanley Consultants delivers integrated, innovative and resilient solutions that help developers secure reliable power while minimizing interruptions and reducing stress on existing grids.
- Water Systems: We provide integrated water and cooling solutions essential for data center operations and draw on extensive experience in chilled water plant design, cooling tower systems and advanced thermal management. Recognizing that cooling efforts can account for 38-40% of a data center’s total power consumption, our water infrastructure experts design systems for N+1 redundancy, incorporating secondary systems such as indirect evaporative cooling units and direct-expansion systems. Our experience includes closed-loop glycol and water cooling systems with chillers, pumps and dry coolers, as well as water treatment facilities for cooling water management. With a proven track record in managing large-scale cooling infrastructure, including water-cooled variable speed chillers, open cooling towers and water-side economizers, we deliver reliable, resilient thermal solutions that maximize efficiency, reduce operational costs and optimize water usage.
- Buildings & Facilities: Our comprehensive buildings and facilities practice brings critical expertise in structural engineering, mechanical systems and adaptive reuse, all essential for data center development. Retrofitting existing infrastructure can condense project timelines by up to 30% through reduced site development and utility setup time. Our multidisciplinary team conducts thorough evaluations of structural integrity to verify that existing facilities can accommodate future expansion requirements, analyzes thermal management capabilities to maintain optimal operating conditions and evaluates adaptive reuse potential to maximize the value of existing assets. By integrating these specialized capabilities, we transform existing structures into high-performance data centers that meet demanding operational requirements while optimizing capital investment and accelerating time to market.
We seamlessly integrate technical solutions with program management expertise across asset types to provide clients with holistic strategies that optimize asset performance, reduce capital costs and advance sustainability goals – resulting in data centers that operate efficiently at the intersection of energy, water and built environments.
Powering Reliability Through Balance of Plant Excellence
As AI workloads demand greater energy capacity, traditional natural gas solutions —such as combustion turbines and reciprocating engines —face long lead times and cannot generate power immediately. Balance of Plant (BOP) engineering addresses these challenges by providing a holistic approach to data center infrastructure that supports reliable power delivery.
Rather than treating energy systems as standalone assets, BOP engineering integrates advanced technologies such as BESS and microgrids as fully coordinated components. BESS, for instance, can create synthetic inertia by charging and discharging battery power into the system, helping data centers overcome power fluctuation challenges. When combined within microgrids, BESS works in coordination with renewables, natural gas generation and emerging technologies to enhance overall resilience. These integrated systems can operate independently or in parallel with the utility grid, ultimately enabling up to 99.999% uptime for mission-critical data center operations.
Water Wisdom: Optimizing the Critical Cooling Resource
While energy often dominates data center discussions, water management is an equally critical and often underestimated challenge. As the industry faces unprecedented growth, water constraints are increasingly influencing data center siting and expansion decisions and intensifying the water-energy nexus.
Cooling systems drive a significant portion of data center power demand, and water-based cooling remains the most effective solution for high-density computing. Yet the landscape is challenging: in regions with the highest withdrawal rates, water availability and permitting are creating early advisory needs. Our end-to-end water, wastewater and reuse capabilities help clients overcome these compliance, capacity and resource availability challenges.
Integrated Water-Energy Solutions
Our approach uniquely integrates water and energy systems, leveraging advanced tools and our deep understanding of their interdependencies to maximize efficiency across both. Digitalization provides owners with real-time visibility and control over energy and water use, creating faster returns on investment. In addition to digitalization, our solutions include source water analysis, treatment system design, cooling tower optimization, wastewater management and water reuse strategies. These integrated solutions help clients navigate increasingly stringent water use regulations, address water scarcity concerns in drought-prone regions and implement real-time monitoring for continuous optimization.
Partner with Purpose
Stanley Consultants has been a pioneer in engineering innovation for over a century. Today, we bring this legacy of expertise across design, engineering and construction to empower data center clients to meet their power, cooling and operational goals. From adaptive infrastructure designs and feasibility studies, to microgrid and cooling integration, we design and deliver proven data center solutions. As a testament to our experience, we are currently helping deliver 1 gigawatt of capacity to data centers via on-site generation resources.
Ready to explore how Stanley Consultants can support your data center infrastructure needs? Contact our team to discuss your project and discover how our integrated approach can deliver measurable value across buildings, energy and water systems.