Editorial for the Special Issue on Next Generation Datacenter Power Conversion Technologies

Modern datacenter is becoming the critical infrastructure with the rapid evolvement of emerging information technologies such as 5G communications, big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. In 2030, energy consumption in datacenters is projected to be 3000 TWh, which will account 7.6% of global energy usuage. The rising demand for data center services is accompanied by massive energy consumption, and it motivates intensive research on cost-effective, reliable, and greener electricity to optimize the utilization of electric power. In datacenter, less than half of the total energy is delivered to the terminal load, such as CPU, GPU, memory, and disk, while the rest is lost during power conversion, distribution, and cooling. This results in high costs, large cooling equipment, and inefficient power utilization. Higher energy efficiency, higher power density, better cooling, and cost reduction are the major driving forces to shape greener datacenter power management technologies. Correspondingly, we organized this Special Issue on Next Generation Datacenter Power Conversion Technologies to provide technical insights on the latest power architectures, power electronic topologies, modeling and analysis methods, and control strategies to embrace next-generation datacenter power conversion.