Data centers have become one of the most debated pieces of modern infrastructure. Communities want the jobs, tax base and digital capacity they bring, but they worry about water, power and noise. Much of that worry rests on an old picture of what a data center has to be: a giant rectangular box packed with chillers and cooling towers. ServerDomes is one of the companies proving that picture is out of date.

A Different Shape for a Data Center

ServerDomes builds data centers inside geodesic domes. The idea traces back to Oregon Health & Science University, which opened its Data Center West in Hillsboro, Oregon, in 2014. That $22 million facility was housed under an aluminum dome and cooled almost entirely by outside air, with no conventional air-conditioning units or ductwork. The university patented the design (U.S. Patent 9,404,265) and licensed it to ServerDomes, which was spun out of OHSU to bring the concept to market.

The physics is simple. Cool outside air enters through louvers near the base of the dome, passes through the server racks, and the heated air rises naturally and exits through a vent at the top. Instead of fighting heat with energy-hungry chiller plants, the building’s shape does much of the work.

What the Numbers Show

Efficiency is where the dome design stands out. According to figures reported by DatacenterDynamics, the original 4 MW dome spends only about 0.2 MW on non-IT equipment and runs at an annualized power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.13, with an average water usage effectiveness of 0.1 liters per kilowatt-hour. For comparison, ServerDomes cites 1.4 to 1.6 as a typical PUE for conventional facilities.

The company says that translates to up to 27% less power loss and roughly 90% less water than a comparable conventional data center. For any city weighing a project against its water supply and grid capacity, that difference matters.

• Passive convection cooling: the curved interior moves heat with natural airflow rather than large chiller and water loops.
• Built for high-density computing: ServerDomes supports air cooling at 10 to 25 kW per rack, direct liquid cooling at 40 to 100 kW, and immersion cooling at 150 to 300 kW for AI workloads.
• Less material, more open space: the triangulated geodesic structure uses about 30% less material than a comparable rectangular shell, per the company, and leaves a column-free interior.
• Modular growth: each dome is designed for 10 to 20 MW, and campuses scale by adding domes to reach 50 to 100 MW or more.

Faster to Build, Easier to Scale

Speed has become as important as efficiency. ServerDomes states that a dome can be watertight in about 12 weeks and live in under 12 months from groundbreaking, compared with the 18 to 36 months common for traditional hyperscale builds. Because capacity is added one dome at a time, owners can match construction to actual demand instead of building oversized shells and substations that sit waiting for tenants.

That modular, right-sized approach mirrors how we think about infrastructure at Infrastructure Partners: build what performs, scale it as demand is proven, and design for decades of operation, not just day one. It is the same thinking behind our Infrastructure 2.0 framework.

Easing the Strain on Local Power and Water

Power is the biggest constraint facing new data centers. ServerDomes notes that grid interconnection queues stretch four to seven years in many high-demand markets. Its answer is to pair domes with on-site, behind-the-meter generation, using natural gas today with the option to add solar, battery storage, hydrogen blends and waste-heat reuse as those technologies mature. Where utility capacity is available, a campus can still connect to the grid for redundancy.

On-site generation and storage are a growing part of modern infrastructure planning well beyond data centers. Our work in distributed energy systems and water and utility infrastructure is built on the same goal: reduce pressure on shared public systems while improving reliability.

Proven in Real Conditions

Air-cooled designs raise a fair question: what happens on the hottest days? The original Oregon dome has been operating since 2014, and ServerDomes reports that it came through the record Pacific Northwest heat wave of June 2021, when Portland reached 116°F, without equipment failures, using its adiabatic assist system for added cooling during the peak.

The company is now taking the design to new markets. DatacenterDynamics has reported a ServerDomes agreement to deploy dome data centers along a new fiber route in Mexico and a partnership with LiquidCool Solutions to bring immersion cooling into the domes.

Why This Matters for Communities

Much of today’s public debate about data centers is based on older facilities and older data. Designs like ServerDomes show what the next generation can look like: compact modular buildings, far less water, less wasted energy and faster delivery. For municipalities and regional leaders, the right question is no longer simply whether to allow data centers, but what standards a good project should meet. Efficiency, water stewardship, local power planning and a modest physical footprint should top that list.

At Infrastructure Partners, we follow innovators that make critical infrastructure more efficient, resilient and community-friendly, and ServerDomes is a standout example. To learn more about the dome design, visit serverdomes.com. To talk about modernizing the infrastructure your community or organization depends on, see how our platform works or contact our team.

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