Data centres and energy consumption

Phanofi ApS is a deep-tech photonic design spin-off from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Our core mission is to develop energy-efficient communication for data centres. Data centres play a crucial role in our society by storing, processing and analysing vast amounts of information. However, their energy consumption is sky-rocketing. By 2030, data centres are projected to consume approximately 21% of the global electricity. Our technology has a potential to save around 10% of the electricity consumption in data centres.

For a data centre like the one Facebook (Meta) built in Odense, this power saving translates to powering around 16,000 Danish households. This lowers the carbon footprint equivalent to burning 315,000 barrels of oil.

“Our solution has the potential to make a substantial impact on a global scale. We have successfully demonstrated our technology in the lab and showcased its potential to industry stakeholders. With this funding from the Vissing Foundation, we will manufacture our first industry standard photonic chip, which will be tested using commercial test bench. This will enable our product development to move to a higher technology readiness level (TRL-6),” says Dagmawi Alemayehu Bekele, CTO and Co-Founder, Phanofi ApS.