Control-Oriented Prototype Energy Model for Data Centers

The growing power density in AI- and cloud-driven data centers heightens cooling challenges, highlighting the need for reliable system models. Prototype building models offer standardized and reproducible frameworks, yet existing data center prototypes mainly emphasize long-term energy assessment, lacking the model fidelity and standardized interfaces required for developing and testing advanced control strategies. To enable control-oriented studies, we developed the first high-fidelity prototype building model for an air-cooled data center based on co-simulation between Modelica and EnergyPlus. Compared with existing models, the proposed prototype offers these key advantages: (1) It provides a more faithful representation of the HVAC system serving the data center, with features such as underfloor air distribution (UFAD), and detailed patterns of IT equipment operation. (2) It establishes a standardized co-simulation interface for integrating and testing control strategies. These improvements enable more accurate dynamic simulations and facilitate the development and evaluation of advanced control algorithms under realistic operating conditions. The results of the enhanced prototype demonstrate physically consistent interactions between dynamic IT heat generation and HVAC thermal responses under different control conditions. With the unified control interface, the model provides a practical yet detailed test case for evaluating data center performance.