Madrid's Exera leads CDTI-backed project on a digital twin for AI data centres

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Exera, a Madrid engineering company founded in 2016 around renewable energy and industrial plants, is building a digital twin for AI data centres. The project, called DTEMOADC, is backed by CDTI Innovación through its INNOGLOBAL line, with co-financing from European FEDER funds via the POPE programme. The plan is a virtual copy of a data centre, updated continuously with real data, that models servers, cooling and power distribution, simulates airflow and heat, and lets AI recommend adjustments or spot faults before anyone touches the actual building. Trial and error, in other words, moved somewhere it is cheap.

The company has spent years applying similar tools, its DelfOS and TheIA platforms, to solar thermal plants. Raúl Mendoza, its director of operations and maintenance, says AI data centres share many of those problems "but with a greater scale and urgency." The project will track the standard gauges for energy, water and carbon (PUE, WUE and CUE) and aims for renewables to cover at least 20% of operations.

It is also the first time Exera leads an international consortium instead of joining one as a partner. Its partner is the University of Sharjah, which is developing the model and thermal simulations while the work sits in an early data-gathering phase. Exera sees the project as its way into the data-centre business and into the Middle East.