Federal Program Targets 20-35% Data Center Efficiency Gain
A two-phase cooling rack at Villanova University joins a federal research center still testing its efficiency goals.
Updated on Nov. 4, 2026 in Data Centers
Accelsius is providing its NeuCool IR150 rack to Villanova University as shared two-phase cooling infrastructure for the NSF Center for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems (ES2), a federal data center efficiency research program. The announcement is of a research-stage deployment, with installation at Villanova expected in early October 2026.
Why it matters
ES2 aims to improve the energy efficiency of U.S. data centers by 20-35%, a target that matters as data center power demand grows. The partnership ties a commercial cooling vendor directly into a federally funded university research effort with industry partners including Google, Microsoft and Meta.
The source reports a stated efficiency objective of 20-35% and an estimated equivalence to one to two power plants every three years, but no measured cooling performance figures for the NeuCool IR150 are provided. The program's results are not yet available, and the source does not specify the baseline against which the savings would be measured.
The players
Accelsius
A liquid-cooling company whose NeuCool platform is a two-phase, direct-to-chip system and a member of the NVIDIA Inception program.
Villanova University
A founding member of ES2, home to the ES2 Laboratory for Advanced Thermal and Fluid Systems that studies two-phase data center cooling.
NSF Center for Energy-Smart Electronic Systems (ES2)
A federal NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center focused on data center energy efficiency, with industry partners including Google, Microsoft and Meta.
The University of Texas at Arlington
The second ES2 university site, where a COOLERCHIPS project supported by Accelsius is led by Dr. Dereje Agonafer.
The details
The NeuCool IR150 uses two-phase, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, in which a fluid boils on contact with hot chip surfaces and carries heat away as vapor, and the platform is described as scaling from single racks to whole data centers. Accelsius is supplying the rack as shared infrastructure so ES2 researchers can run system-level tests on how this cooling behaves in a full rack configuration. Villanova's ES2 Laboratory for Advanced Thermal and Fluid Systems is studying two-phase data center cooling, which is the research focus the hardware will support.
Timeline
Early October 2026: the NeuCool IR150 is expected to be installed at Villanova University.
Nov. 3, 2026: Accelsius announced its participation in ES2.
The Tech Race
ES2 is an NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center operating three university sites, positioning the federal program alongside industry partners Google, Microsoft and Meta in the search for data center cooling efficiency. Accelsius's contribution adds a commercial two-phase rack to that competitive research effort, which the source frames against no other named competing program.
The NeuCool IR150 is research hardware at Villanova University with installation expected in early October 2026, so it is not available to commercial data center operators yet. The source does not announce pricing or a commercial release date for the platform.
The takeaway
Watch whether ES2 publishes measured results from its system-level testing against its 20-35% efficiency objective. Those results, and any follow-on commercial release of the NeuCool platform, will show whether two-phase cooling delivers at data center scale.
Further reading
For broader context on how cooling and power are reshaping the sector, see our Data Centers coverage across the United States.
Source note: This article includes information reported by HPCwire.
