“Energy efficiency is at Delta’s core”: Interview with Delta Electronics’ Rajesh Kaushal

India’s data centre and telecom domains are experiencing substantial growth. Delta Electronics India has been playing an active role in both these segments by providing solutions tailored to the dynamic needs of these customers. In an interview with tele.net, Rajesh Kaushal, Vice President, Delta Electronics India, talks about the company’s initiatives, industry challenges, sustainability plans and strategies for future growth…

What have been the key performance highlights for Delta Electronics India over the past year?

Delta has demonstrated remarkable growth in all business sectors across India. Our data centre solutions business has exhibited strong performance, surpassing the industry’s compound annual growth rate, becoming an area of notable success. Another domain, the telecom power solutions sector, has also achieved a commendable 20 per cent year-on-year growth, with a focus on providing renewable power solutions, lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery-based power solutions and hybrid power solutions for telecom infrastructure.

Delta is experiencing growth in various segments in India, including electric vehicle charging, the industrial automation business unit, the display solutions business unit and the energy infrastructure solutions business unit.

What are the key products/solutions being offered by the company? Are there any new solutions/products in the pipeline?

The data centre business unit provides high efficiency uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) solutions to major data centre players, colocation players and hyperscalers in the industry. The unit also offers monolithic UPSs that can scale up to the MW level and cater to high-power demanding applications. Complementing these UPS solutions, the unit provides power conversion equipment and special battery solutions through the energy storage power business by offering high-end Li-ion batteries for data centre applications. In addition, the unit collaborates with partners who specialise in these storage solutions for MW-scale applications.

The unit’s portfolio also includes power distribution units that can distribute power up to very high levels, as well as data centre infrastructure solutions, including data centre infrastructure management solutions.

Regarding telecom power solutions, the unit provides a range of offerings from power generation to power conversion. Its portfolio also includes Li-ion batteries, outdoor cabinet solutions and unique thermal climate solutions. By combining these offerings, the data centre unit provides hybrid power solutions such as converters, inverters, smart controllers and outdoor solutions, along with battery backup. It also provides remote monitoring solutions that relay all data.

Additionally, the unit’s climate thermal solutions, such as heat exchangers, thermosyphons, DC air conditioners, AC air conditioners and fan-based cooling solutions, cater to telecom spaces.

What are your thoughts on the company’s “Innovation on Wheels” initiative? What are the key features and advantages of this solution?

“Innovation on Wheels” is an initiative by Delta India to introduce new-age technologies that have been mastered in recent years. The aim is to solve the challenges of scalability and enable faster deployment of data centres. It is a prefabricated data centre solution that can be housed in a container or constructed using prefabricated materials, and aims to replace traditional brick-and-mortar data centres that take a long time to develop and are capital-intensive.

As 5G and 4G proliferation increases and data usage goes up, there is a growing demand for low latency in data-hungry applications. This means that data computation and storage need to be closer to the applications, and large data centres spread across countries cannot meet this demand. To facilitate this, we can expect the rapid deployment of edge data centres by

various industries such as educational institutions, warehousing hubs, retail hubs and hospitals.

Delta is preparing for this transformation by developing solutions and educating customers on the technologies it offers and the possibilities customers can explore.

“One of our main goals is to rapidly expand our presence in the data centre space.”

What are the key challenges faced by the data centre as well as telecom segments? How can these be addressed?

In the data centre industry, one of the biggest challenges is the cost of energy. With large energy needs, it is important to ensure that it is used efficiently. Every per cent of energy efficiency can help save significant costs for data centre players, making them more competitive and improving their returns on investment. The industry is highly competitive, and power utilisation efficiency is crucial. In addition, new parameters such as water and carbon utilisation efficiencies are being considered to increase overall cost structure efficiency.

Another significant challenge is time-to market. Data centre players are striving to deploy their solutions as fast as possible to keep up with the demands of major consumers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services. Thus, speed-to-market and infrastructural readiness are key challenges that the data centre industry currently faces.

Cooling solutions are also a critical area for data centres. It is important not only for operations but also because they consume a significant amount of power. New-age data centres have higher intensity, with server racks much more powerful than those in the past. If the power density increases, the existing cooling technology may not be able to serve new-age demands. Therefore, new technologies such as liquid cooling, heat exchangers and immersion cooling should be implemented and widely adopted in the future.

In the telecom sector, there are several challenges, including the cost of energy, efficient utilisation of power sources and power backup solutions. One of the main challenges is ensuring that the energy solutions being implemented work efficiently in the field. Another issue is seamlessly integrating new solutions into existing networks to deliver the intended benefits. Yet another challenge is the heavy investment in 5G deployment, which has yet to be monetised, and the average revenue per user has not increased.

What are your thoughts on the rising focus on sustainability among the data centre and telecom domains? What have been Delta’s strategies in this regard?

Sustainability has become an important topic for the data centre industry. As a result, environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives are becoming more relevant. Delta has been actively working on ESG initiatives, including our goal to be 100 per cent renewable by 2030. We aim to convert all our offices to renewable energy, which will make us a more valuable partner to our customers. Additionally, we believe that energy efficiency and carbon neutrality are important for our products. Therefore, we are focused on developing high-efficiency energy products that are commercially viable for our customers to deploy. Energy efficiency is at the core of Delta and is an important element in our sustainability matrix.

Another initiative we are engaged in is energy infrastructure solutions. These include energy management, power backup and energy storage solutions, which are available in-house with Delta. We are ready to deploy these solutions across large data centres and telecom facilities.

What are Delta’s growth plans and strategies for the next few years?

One of our main goals is to rapidly expand our presence in the data centre space. While we are among the top three providers of data centre solutions, we aim to increase our market share and maintain our progressive approach in this space. Data centres remain at the heart of our strategy, and consumers will notice a more active presence from us in this field. In addition to our DC solutions, we will also introduce other offerings such as micro data centre solutions.

On the telecom side, we will continue to lead the market with energy-efficient, cost-effective and high quality products, complemented by strong services and new solutions that we are developing.

We are also heavily investing in infrastructure to increase our production capabilities and introduce new products as part of the “Make in India” initiative. We have invested approximately $500 million in expanding our factory and opening new locations. As part of our strategy, all major critical components and core building blocks are now being produced in India.

Regarding services, we are making significant investments in processes, IT tools and digitalisation to improve our service capability and speed to market. We have a significant base of almost one million deployed equipment units across the country, including 400-450 MW of IT load in the data centre space. To cater to these, we have skilled manpower across various functions and are implementing IT processes to enhance our service capabilities.