Data centers are the backbone of the digital economy, but their growth comes with a challenge: heat.
Cooling systems account for 37% of data center energy. Improving the motorized fans of a data center is one of the most effective ways to reduce energy use, cut costs, and improve reliability.
At ECM, we believe the motor is more than a component, it’s a lever for efficiency, sustainability, and resilience.
Why Motors Matter in Data Center Cooling
Motors power the fans and pumps that drive every cooling system: computer room air conditioning (CRAC), computer room air-handling (CRAH), chillers, condensers, fan arrays, and even rack-level units. Their design has a direct impact on cost, performance, and uptime.
Efficiency: Every percentage point counts. More efficient motors reduce wasted energy and shrink overall cooling demand.
Turn-down efficiency: Beyond peak performance, motors must operate efficiently at partial loads. This is often the case when a data center is not yet fully commissioned or is running under design capacity. Maintaining efficiency under these conditions is critical to overall wire-to-air performance — how effectively a motor and fan system moves air at a given flow rate and static pressure.
Reliability: Thousands of motors in the same environment can fail in correlated patterns. Reliability must be built into the design.
Weight and form factor: Lighter motors reduce rooftop and rack load, simplify installation, and can cut structural costs.
Controllability and quality of motion: Controllability and quality of motion are essential in modern HVAC systems, particularly in data center cooling. Variable-speed operation must be smooth to avoid problems; poor quality of motion can excite mechanical modes in support structures, leading to material fatigue and premature failure. Strong controllability is also critical for turn-down performance and for coordinating fan arrays, where effective load-sharing helps avoid correlated failure modes.
How ECM’s PCB Stator Technology Delivers
Higher System Efficiency
Conventional motors may achieve 92–93% efficiency at a single point, but that’s under ideal rated conditions. In real-world use, they are often oversized, less efficient when paired with a specific fan, and lose performance at partial loads.
ECM’s PCB Stator technology improves system-level wire-to-air efficiency in three ways:
- Optimized across the fan curve: Motors are designed for the actual operating environment, including turn-down conditions, rather than for a generic load.
- Integration with fan geometry: ECM designs can free up space for airflow, improving the efficiency of the overall air-handling system.
- Broad efficiency range: The loss mechanisms in PCB Stator motors allow them to maintain high performance across a wide range of loads, not just at a single peak point. This was expanded upon in a recent case study.
This combination delivers wire-to-air efficiency gains that go far beyond the 1–2% marginal improvements offered by conventional “high efficiency” motors.
Reliability by Design
In data centers, installing thousands of motors under identical conditions can make failures highly correlated — so reliability must be built in from the start.
ECM’s motors have been rigorously tested in realistic use cases and proven in the field, with more than 60,000 units deployed worldwide. Our model-based design process ensures that every motor characteristic is accurately predicted, and our controllers continuously estimate parameters during operation. This enables not only diagnostics and condition-based maintenance, but also smarter coordination of fan arrays to balance load and avoid correlated failures.
The construction of an ECM PCB Stator motor also contributes to its reliability. Windings are fully encapsulated, and the parts of the motor that generate heat have a short, highly conductive path to ambient, keeping temperatures under control. Together, these design choices deliver robust performance and extended motor life in demanding data center environments.
Lightweight, Flexible Form Factors
ECM designed PCB Stator motors can weigh as little as half to a third of conventional machines, such as radial flux permanent magnet or PM-assisted synchronous reluctance motors. This reduction in mass not only lowers structural load requirements but also makes installation and maintenance easier, in many cases light enough for a single worker to handle without lift equipment.
Equally important is the planar geometry of ECM’s axial flux design. Unlike bulkier radial flux machines, PCB Stator motors fit naturally into the constrained, planar spaces of HVAC systems and fan arrays. By taking up less room, they simplify integration and can even free up additional airflow paths that improve overall cooling system efficiency.
Smooth, Quiet Motion
ECM designed PCB Stator motors and controls deliver ripple-free torque characteristics under all load conditions, translating to lower acoustic noise, reduced vibration, and greater reliability. Unlike conventional machines, where stresses fall on conductors, insulation, and magnetic structures, ECM motors confine stress to the stator plane — the strongest axis of the material. This structural advantage helps extend motor life and reduce fatigue in fan arrays.
ECM controllers also rely on inductors for filtering rather than using the motor itself, a design choice that significantly reduces EMI and ensures stable operation in sensitive data center environments. While ECM does not currently offer a three-phase unity power-factor solution, we anticipate that direct DC bus supply will become increasingly important in the fan applications where our technology delivers the most value.
Designing Motors for Next-Generation Data Centers
ECM’s PrintStator Motor CAD platform enables partners to design optimized data center cooling motors in hours, not months. Motors can be mass-produced through PCB fabrication worldwide, or integrated directly into OEM fan and pump production lines.
When co-designed with fans or pumps, ECM motors help OEMs deliver cooling systems that are more efficient, more reliable, quieter, and easier to install than legacy designs.
We believe PCB Stator technology offers data centers a sustained competitive advantage, delivering lower costs, higher efficiency, and improved sustainability at scale.
To discuss your next HVAC project, contact us today.
