Johnson Controls is expanding its AI Factory Reference Design Guide series with the launch of a new guide focused on air-cooled chillers. This builds on the company’s earlier water-cooled chiller guide released in February, and marks another step toward creating what it aims to be the industry’s most comprehensive set of global design blueprints for data center thermal management.
Additional guides covering absorption chillers and direct-to-chip liquid cooling are expected to follow.
As AI workloads scale rapidly, data center operators are dealing with a new set of challenges from higher cooling power demands and rising loop temperatures to efficiency losses caused by heat islands and growing concerns around water usage.
Johnson Controls’ guide series is designed to address these issues, offering a roadmap for improving energy and water efficiency while also reducing noise and adapting to different climates, workloads, and future expansion needs.
The newly released guide focuses on designing scalable data centers ranging from smaller deployments to massive 1GW AI factories using air-cooled chillers.
It lays out a complete thermal architecture that combines high-efficiency air-cooled YORK centrifugal chillers (including YDAM and YVAM models), fan coil walls (FCWs), and coolant distribution units (CDUs). Together, these systems manage both air-cooled and liquid-cooled IT loads effectively.
The guide also includes detailed sizing references for 220MW compute clusters, along with recommended operating temperatures and conditions across the entire cooling chain.
Among the key outcomes highlighted:
- Up to 50MW of power can be returned to the AI facility by using bifurcated cooling loops for air and liquid systems
- Annual energy consumption can be reduced by 32% through smarter use of redundant chillers
- Peak power savings of 20MW can be achieved by addressing heat island effects in chiller plants
- Eliminating cooling towers enables zero water usage, saving more than 12 million gallons of water per day
- Raising chilled water temperatures to support warm-water cooling loops improves efficiency, delivering a 30% increase in COP and reducing chiller count by 27%
Overall, the guide reflects a growing industry shift toward more 
efficient, scalable, and sustainable cooling strategies as AI-driven data centers continue to expand in size and complexity.
Leadership Comments
“At gigawatt scale, AI factories require a fundamentally different way of thinking about infrastructure,” said Austin Domenici, president, Johnson Controls Global Data Center Solutions. “The future requires designing integrated systems that can scale predictably, perform efficiently and adapt as technology evolves. This guide reflects how Johnson Controls helps customers plan holistically for AI growth, from design to operations, anywhere in the world.”
To Know More About The Johnson Controls’ AI Factory Reference Design Guide Series: CLICK HERE
