Schneider Electric bets on Padua pole for data centre cooling

"Italia will become our European centre of competence for liquid cooling, on which 60-70% of the new data centres being built between now and 2030, dedicated to artificial intelligence, will be based. We will expand production here, we want to and will continue to invest in Europe and Italia'. This is how Scheider Electric CEO Olivier Blum announces the strengthening of the plant in Conselve (Padua), in Italy's cooling valley, where the French multinational works on advanced cooling solutions for data centres and critical applications, hitherto air cooled.

"Italia has always been a global centre of expertise for this technology, but now, for the new AI-related data centres, it will no longer be sufficient. Two years ago, we acquired one of the world's specialists in liquid cooling, the US company Motivair, and now we are adding its expertise to the Italian pole and starting to produce liquid cooling systems. Italia will become the European centre of competence for Schneider in this field, which represents a huge opportunity over the next five years."

We meet Olivier Blum in Stezzano (Bergamo), Schneider Electric's headquarters in Italia, where one of the products embodying the transition is also made: Sm AirSeT medium voltage switchboards without SF6 gas, an electricity distribution infrastructure with an air-insulated heart and no longer using fluorinated gases, outlawed by the EU from 1 January 2026 for environmental reasons. Not only that: they are the first digital natives in the family, equipped with sensors that generate data made available to customers - energy distributors, utilities, energy-intensive companies - to manage, also thanks to artificial intelligence, their correct operation. With the possibility of predictive and timely maintenance.

"We are a company that has been in the market for 190 years, we make products that help people consume electricity at home, in buildings, in data centres, in industry, in infrastructure. Over the last ten years, we have made sure that this equipment was connected, digital. Not only that: that they had an additional level of control, i.e. the ability to extract data and process it, also thanks to AI. We made them intelligent and thus able to generate more efficiency and sustainability. We transformed Schneider Electric from a hardware company to a hardware and software company,' explains the CEO.

Blum has just attended the international conference of Aveva, a British industrial software company that Schneider Electric acquired in 2023. The annual meeting, always in different locations, was in Milan this year. "Every year we select the most advanced countries with the greatest interest from our customers. Italia has a long industrial history and Milan is really the nerve centre,' explains the CEO. And he adds: 'After France, Italia was probably the second most important country for Schneider in Europe, one of the most advanced in electrification, and with more capacity in research and development and production'.