A Monterrey Testing Data Center Rewrote Its Cooling Economics. Here's the Number.

A global leader in technology operates a mission-critical microchip testing data center in Monterrey, Mexico. It runs liquid cooling. It requires a continuous supply of chilled water at 82°F. A conventional design would have handed that facility an annual operating cost of roughly $600,000 in electricity alone — 5.7 gigawatt-hours burned every year to do one job.

Today that facility runs its chillers less than one month per year. The rest of the year, free cooling does the work. The same 82°F outlet temperature. The same 1,000-ton cooling load. Roughly one-tenth the energy. Over five million kilowatt-hours saved annually, and the carbon footprint associated with that consumption reduced accordingly.

This is what happens when a cooling system is designed around a different premise than the one the industry has defaulted to for the last forty years.

The Premise Most Facilities Inherit

For most of the last four decades, cooling decisions in commercial and mission-critical facilities were driven by first cost and nameplate capacity. Cooling towers became standard because water was cheap, regulation was light, and energy prices were predictable. Chillers ran year-round because system designs never asked whether they needed to. Mechanical cooling was the default, not the exception.

That world is gone. Water volatility, regulatory scrutiny, ESG reporting requirements, and energy market instability have changed what "good cooling" looks like in operating terms. The question is no longer how many tons a facility needs. The question is how much operational risk a facility is willing to carry — and how much of that risk sits inside the cooling system. In that framing, water is the risk. Not the solution.

What Monterrey Actually Proved

The Monterrey project required reducing return water temperature from 122°F down to 82°F across a 1,000-ton cooling load. Monterrey's climate does not make that easy. Dry coolers alone cannot consistently hit 82°F during peak summer conditions, which is why a conventional design defaults to chillers running year-round.

Andely's engineers took a different approach. Two-stage Eco Cool Water dry coolers handle the thermal work for most of the year, reducing return water from 122°F to 82°F under normal conditions. During the hottest weeks — roughly one month out of twelve — the dry coolers drop the temperature to 86°F and backup chillers trim the final nine degrees to the 82°F setpoint.

Here is what that architecture delivered against a conventional 1,000-TR chiller-only design:

Same guaranteed performance. One-tenth the operating cost. And the capital footprint of the chiller plant is preserved only as backup — not eliminated, which is the point. This is not a theoretical energy model. It is an installed, operating system serving a mission-critical load for a global technology company.

Why This Matters Beyond One Data Center

A >90% energy reduction is not a rounding error. It is the difference between a cooling system that compounds cost every year of its operating life and a cooling system that compounds savings. Across a 15- to 20-year asset life, the Monterrey economics translate to millions of dollars that remain in the operating budget instead of flowing to the utility.

And the argument extends well past energy. Conventional cooling towers consume water continuously through evaporation. That water requires chemical treatment, blowdown management, and active maintenance. Each of those layers introduces cost, service exposure, Legionella risk, and regulatory scrutiny that did not exist — or did not matter as much — when the industry codified its habits.

Andely's hybrid architecture removes most of that exposure by removing most of the water. Free cooling first. Adiabatic enhancement only when required. Mechanical cooling as a strategic backup rather than a constant cost center. Closed-loop operation where the facility demands it.

The Question Owners Should Be Asking This Year

If you operate a facility with significant cooling load, three questions are worth putting in front of your engineering team this quarter.

The Monterrey facility answered that last question with a number: more than $600,000, every year, against a baseline that the industry still treats as the default.

Where We Go From Here

Andely is part of a broader portfolio of high-performance building technologies TPI represents in the U.S. market. What ties the portfolio together is a consistent operating premise: high-performance buildings demand high-performance building technologies, and the economics of that difference show up in the P&L, not the spec sheet.

With Andely's dry cooler and free cooling solutions, that premise becomes tangible: reducing water dependency, lowering energy consumption, and helping facilities move toward more sustainable, resilient, and cost-efficient cooling strategies.

If cooling strategy is on your agenda this year — whether for a new build, a retrofit, or a portfolio-wide standardization effort — this is the conversation to have.