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LG's magnetic-bearing chiller claims a 20% NPLV gain over inverter screw units
LG states the efficiency gain against inverter screw chillers and a separate 30% winter saving against conventional pre-cooling, so the two figures do not stack.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- LG Electronics launched an air-cooled oil-free inverter turbo chiller for AI data centres, saying it improves non-standard part load value by more than 20% against existing inverter screw chillers.
- The gain comes from an oil-free magnetic bearing that suspends the rotating shaft in midair by electromagnetic force instead of mounting it to the body, which minimises mechanical friction.
- In a power outage, a UPS for control power and an integrated buffer tank keep coolant circulating, and LG says the unit recovers 100% of rated cooling capacity within 180 seconds of power returning.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Because the efficiency claim is defined against one class of machine, an operator running anything other than inverter screw chillers has to build its own baseline before the 20% means money.
- decision The winter saving depends on cold hours, so the same unit is worth different amounts in Dublin and in Dallas. The purchase becomes a site-by-site calculation.
- capability A three-minute return to full rated cooling gives a designer a number to size thermal ride-through against, so how long a restart takes stops being an open-ended assumption.
- precedent Quoting NPLV against a named comparator sets the terms competitors have to answer on, and it puts the vendor in a position where a customer's metered kilowatt-hours can contradict the brochure.
Compressors are more than 80% of a chiller's power consumption [6], and refrigerant pre-cooling is the feature LG says takes 30% out of annual consumption relative to conventional pre-cooling methods [5]. To cut 30% of the total when the compressor is at most the whole of a four-fifths share, at least 37.5% of the compressor's annual electricity has to stop [12]. That figure is a statement about how many hours a year a site is cold enough to leave the machine off. LG did not disclose a price, a launch customer, or the reference climate behind the annual figure.
The two percentages also do not add. The 20%-plus is NPLV against existing inverter screw chillers [2]; the 30% is against conventional pre-cooling [5]. An operator swapping out installed screw machines can carry the first number into its model and has to establish the second from its own weather and load history [14].
The bearing change has a knock-on effect inside the box. The rotating shaft is held in midair by electromagnetic force instead of being mounted to the body, so mechanical friction is minimised [3], and with no lubricant to circulate, the pumps and piping that serve it come out of the machine [4]. LG says the new technologies also reduce breakdowns [11].
Lee Jae-sung, head of the Eco Solution business unit at LG Electronics, said: "This product brings together every value that AI data center customers need, from overwhelming efficiency to the ability to build out sites quickly on a modular basis" [9]. He also said that "with differentiated technology, we will firmly secure leadership in the rapidly reshaping global AI data center cooling market" [10].
The useful part of the announcement is that NPLV is a named metric with a named comparator [2]. A rival has a harder time waving that away than an adjective. And the same announcement reached for "overwhelming efficiency" in the executive's own sentence [9]. A percentage against a vendor-selected baseline is a specification. It becomes a number an operator can underwrite only when a site meters its own annual kilowatt-hours at its own part-load profile, and on a plant where the compressor is the four-fifths [6], the gap between the two can be most of the saving.
Another reading: part-load is where a chiller actually spends its life, so an NPLV improvement is closer to a bill than a full-load rating would be, and the 20% would survive metering. Or the modular hydronic system is the commercial point and the efficiency number is the door-opener. Pumps, valves and emergency buffer tanks built in advance to international standards and assembled on site [7] sell against a construction schedule. LG says it plans to lead the market for AI data centre cooling systems with these technologies [11].
What to watch
- Whether rival chiller makers publish NPLV figures against the same inverter screw comparator.
- A named launch customer or a disclosed price for the air-cooled oil-free turbo chiller.
- Metered annual kilowatt-hours from an operating AI site set against its previous screw-chiller plant.