{
 "id": "6.01",
 "slug": "chillers-and-compressors",
 "url": "/parts/facility-cooling-and-hvac/chillers-and-compressors",
 "name": "Chillers & compressors",
 "qualifiers": null,
 "layer": {
  "id": 6,
  "name": "Facility cooling & HVAC"
 },
 "parent_id": null,
 "children": [
  "6.01a"
 ],
 "summary": "Chillers use a vapor-compression or absorption cycle, built around a compressor, to produce chilled water for the facility's cooling loop.",
 "description_md": "Chillers sit at the facility side of the cooling chain, producing the chilled water that circulates through CRAH units (6.03) and, for liquid-cooled halls, through the facility water loop (6.05) toward the CDU interface described in Layer 5. Chiller type — centrifugal, screw, magnetic-bearing, or absorption — governs efficiency at part load, which matters more for data centers than for typical buildings because IT load runs near-constant rather than swinging with occupancy or weather. Densification pushes plants toward larger, fewer chiller blocks and toward warmer chilled-water setpoints that stretch the hours dry coolers (6.02) can carry the load without compressors engaging at all. Compressors are the component most exposed to broader HVAC demand: large chiller orders queue behind commercial and industrial cooling demand as well as data center demand, so lead time is a scheduling variable in its own right. Investors should watch order backlogs at the major chiller OEMs, how much of a campus's cooling load compressors actually carry versus free-cooling hours, and the split between mechanical-first and adiabatic-first plant designs.",
 "ai_delta": "AI training and inference loads keep chiller plants at sustained near-full utilization instead of the intermittent duty conventional HVAC chillers are sized for, favoring larger, efficiency-optimized plants and pulling chiller lead times into the same order queue as other heavy mechanical and electrical equipment.",
 "bottleneck_status": null,
 "scale_tiers": [
  "enterprise",
  "hyperscale_building",
  "ai_campus",
  "gw_class"
 ],
 "density_modes": [
  "any"
 ],
 "scale_notes": "N+1 chiller redundancy at enterprise scale, shifting to 2N or fully parallel chiller blocks with independent compressor trains at hyperscale and gw-class campuses.",
 "flow": [
  "heat"
 ],
 "companies": [
  {
   "company_id": "carrier",
   "name": "Carrier",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "CARR",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "daikin",
   "name": "Daikin",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "6367.T",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "gree",
   "name": "Gree",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "000651.SZ",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "johnson-controls",
   "name": "Johnson Controls",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "JCI",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "lg",
   "name": "LG",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "066570.KS",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "midea",
   "name": "Midea",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "000333.SZ",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "mitsubishi-electric",
   "name": "Mitsubishi Electric",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "6503.T",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "schneider-electric",
   "name": "Schneider Electric",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "SU.PA",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "trane",
   "name": "Trane",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "TT",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "vertiv",
   "name": "Vertiv",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "VRT",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "petra",
   "name": "Petra",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "private",
   "ticker": null,
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "smardt",
   "name": "Smardt",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "private",
   "ticker": null,
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "stulz",
   "name": "Stulz",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "private",
   "ticker": null,
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  }
 ]
}