How Low-Loss Photonics Can Reduce Water Waste in Data Centers

The Hidden Cost of the Cloud: Water

As cloud computing scales, the environmental cost of powering and cooling massive data centers becomes harder to ignore. While energy consumption often makes headlines, water usage is an equally urgent yet less discussed sustainability challenge.

The U.S. alone is home to 5,426 data centers, many of which rely on evaporative cooling systems. These systems can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per megawatt annually, an alarming figure, particularly in drought-prone or arid regions. As data demand grows, so does the need for more sustainable infrastructure solutions.

At Photonect, we believe innovation in photonic interconnects is key to solving this problem.

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A New Approach: Ultra-Low-Loss Photonic Coupling

Traditional optical fiber-to-chip connections are plagued by modal mismatch where the geometry and mode profiles of single-mode fibers and photonic waveguides do not align. This often leads to insertion losses of over 3 dB, meaning more than 50% of light signal is lost at the connection point.

To compensate, systems require additional amplification, which increases power usage and heat generation further driving the demand for aggressive, water-intensive cooling.

Photonect’s Solution

Our ultra-low-loss mode converters are engineered to solve this bottleneck:

• Achieve <1 dB insertion loss 

• Maintain polarization fidelity 

• Seamlessly couple light between standard SMF-28 fibers and compact silicon photonic waveguides 

This significant improvement in coupling efficiency reduces the need for amplification, lowers power consumption, and minimizes heat output.

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Why This Matters: Scaling Impact

These power savings aren’t theoretical they’re quantifiable and scalable:

• Up to 30% power savings per optical transceiver module 

• With over 43 million transceivers manufactured globally every year, the cumulative effect is enormous 

• Hyperscale data centers may deploy tens of thousands of these modules individually 

By reducing energy consumption at the transceiver level, we indirectly reduce the thermal load on the data center. That means less cooling is required, which in turn leads to dramatically reduced water usage.

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Toward Sustainable Digital Infrastructure

Photonect’s technology doesn’t just make photonic systems more efficient it enables systemic sustainability.

By cutting energy and heat at the interconnect level, we support:

• Reduced strain on local water resources

• Better energy efficiency for hyperscale cloud providers

• Progress toward environmentally responsible data infrastructure 

As global demand for digital services grows, it's essential that the underlying technologies evolve not just for performance, but for planetary health.

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Let’s Build the Future: Efficiently and Responsibly

Photonect is proud to be at the forefront of optical innovation that helps tackle real-world sustainability challenges. Our goal is clear: make photonics not just faster, but cleaner.

If you're building the future of cloud, computing, or communications, let’s talk. Together, we can reduce the environmental footprint of the internet one interconnect at a time.