The background: Managing power in data centers is process-critical and extraordinarily complex. These facilities demand substantial amounts of energy, and the supply must remain stable, clean, and capable of adapting quickly to fluctuations in demand.

Expectations for reliability and security continue to rise, making efficient power management essential not only for operational continuity but also for controlling costs and meeting sustainability goals. In this competitive and crowded environment, speed of deployment is critical—but so is secure, reliable, resilient design.

The complex challenges of complex power systems

Data centers rely on a diverse mix of servers, storage systems, networking hardware, and cooling infrastructure, all of which require uninterrupted and stable power to perform effectively. Any disturbance—such as surges, sags, brownouts, or outages—can lead to equipment damage, data loss, and expensive downtime.

There are many aspects of data center electrical infrastructure that require advanced control and protection to minimize the effects of disturbances, both within the data center and in the bulk power system. Coordinating the operation of various intelligent devices—including energy and power management systems (EMS/PMS), UPS and battery controllers, and protective relays—is a critical part of successful data center design and operation.

With thousands of potential scenarios for system failure, data center operators need a high-fidelity solution that accurately models all possibilities and outcomes on the power system so they can effectively anticipate vulnerabilities and ensure secure, reliable operation.

Highly interconnected electrical infrastructure requires precise coordination to prevent disturbances, downtime, and data loss.

Real-time simulations bring real-world reassurance

Pioneered by RTDS Technologies, real-time simulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing is a key technology for data center protection, automation, and control systems. The RTDS simulator enables data center operators to test multiple devices in a closed loop with the simulated network while easily adjusting network parameters, contingency scenarios, and device settings. Accordingly, system performance can be validated in a controlled laboratory environment before being deployed in the field.

When performed on protection, power, and energy management systems; UPS controls; power plant controllers; and other data center automation; HIL testing supports the design and validation of data center electrical architecture and helps to ensure uninterrupted operation, improved speed of deployment, and reduced costs.

The RTDS simulator consists of user-friendly software and parallel processing hardware that runs a detailed model of the power system in real time. Real physical devices—like data center control and protection—are connected to the simulated network, and the RTDS simulator’s modeling library includes everything required for representing the electrical characteristics of a data center and the surrounding network.

Hardware-in-the-loop testing with real-time simulation validates protection, control, and power management systems before deployment.

Dynamic load models can represent the complex and variable nature of data center demand. Renewable energy generation and energy storage from adjacent microgrids can be modeled at any scale, using renewable plant models. Solar PV, wind energy, and battery models, paired with detailed or simplified models of inverters, allow insight into coordination between inverter-based resources and variable loads.

Numerous data center customers, as well as the utilities that must manage their integration, have successfully applied the RTDS simulator for data center protection and control. Throughout the protection and control development and testing process, thousands of scenarios are run on the RTDS simulator, diagnosing potential areas of failure and building confidence in the system once it’s deployed.

Published March 4, 2026, by AMETEK.