Back to articles

Quantum Computing and the Future of Data Centre Energy

Topic

innovation

Date

27 February 2026

Author

AVK

Read Time

8 min

A high level walk through of the quantum computing (QC) world - the power and cooling challenges of QC in data centres.

The prize for the quantum computing industry is applying vast calculating power to address major global challenges such as climate change, environmental management, biogenetics, medical advances, materials sciences, cryptography and distributed, highly efficient clean energy generation and transmission.

That is why hyperscalers including Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon are investing many billions of dollars in the development of quantum processing unit (QPU) hardware, software and services. Today, the development of viable, fault-tolerant, commercially-operated quantum compute processing is being spoken about as becoming a reality within a five year timeline.

As quantum computers are expected to be deployed into existing data centres using hybrid models, forward-thinking power solutions providers are considering the questions of how facilities housing quantum will be powered and cooled. Companies and researchers are bullish about this timeframe as they race to overcome challenges of stability (qubit decoherence – the loss of quantum information); error rates and quantum error correction; scalability; connectivity and control and software development and applications.

QC Timeline

The 5 year time horizon – researchers and hyperscale companies talk of commercially viable quantum computers being feasible and available within 5 years – reaching so called ‘utility.’ For engineers this is raising questions about:

How much power capacity will be required?
What makes powering and cooling QC data centres different from traditional data centres?
How will QC scale?
How will QPUs AI GPUs, high performance and classical computing co-exist win existing DC buildings?
What types of mechanical and electrical systems will be required?

Modalities

The race to fully functioning Quantum Computing Hardware is taking place in what are known as modalities.
Among the most common modalities are Superconducting qubits, Ion traps, Photonic systems, or Quantum dots, each with unique advantages in coherence times, error rates, and scalability.

A report from property giant JLL, The Future of Quantum Real Estate, says “quantum computing technology is advancing rapidly with significant real estate implications on the horizon…Quantum computers will likely require access to data center cloud infrastructure, and there will probably be efficiency gains by integrating AI and quantum within the same facility. There are already multiple instances of quantum computers being installed in data centers.”

“It is plausible to see a scenario where quantum usage accelerates to the point where QPUs become a common component in many data centers… Keep in mind that the largest cloud providers are developing quantum computers, and they may decide to place quantum operations within their existing data center assets or in close proximity.”

For power design engineering experts, this is sparking interest around the different types of quantum systems under development, what their exact power requirements will be and how quantum machines will be deployed, powered and cooled within data centres. This puts it on the time horizon of those responsible for designing and deploying today’s data centre power topologies.

What is QC?

Quantum computing evolved from the scientific field of quantum theory starting with German physicist Max Planck in 1900, and in the early decades of the 20^th century involved famous scientific names such as Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg.

As well as leading to the development of atomic weapons and nuclear fission power, quantum mechanics paved the way for technologies such as lasers, transistors, the development of semiconductors and quantum computing.

Instead of the ones and zeros of classical computing, quantum uses quantum bits (qubits). Qubits can exist in multiple states at once – representing 1, 0 or both simultaneously – known as superposition. To perform a computation, qubits must be sustained in a “quantum-coherent” state.

Who is developing quantum computing?

The challenge to produce commercially viable, stable and fully operational Quantum computers has been taken up by major hyperscale data centre operators including Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon.

Google is developing its Willow QPU and has established a set of six milestones on its roadmap to error corrected quantum processing.

It lists these as:

Beyond Classical (2019)
Quantum Error Correction
Building a long lived Logical Qubit
Creating a Logical Gate
Engineering Scale Up
Large Error Corrected Quantum Computer. In December 2024 Google announced its Willow QPU.

Microsoft’s Azure Quantum division announced its Majorana1 Quantum chip in February 2025 declaring it as the world’s first Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) powered by a Topological Core, designed to scale to a million qubits on a single chip. Their quantum roadmap carries more information.

Amazon’s Bracket Quantum computing service is operational and the company is working on developing its Ocelot Quantum processor .

Quantum computing R&D is a rapidly growing ecosystem. As well as the tech giants there exists a rapidly growing quantum industry of companies, universities and Government bodies engaged in developing a vast range of technologies.

Quantum computing deployments

Examples of UK developments include QCs based on standard silicon to hardware stacks such as that operated by Quantum Motion at the UK National Quantum Centre the development of rack based quantum technologies with firms such as IQM deploying Quantum Computers into existing data centres.

In September 2025 colocation giant Digital Realty and Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC), announced the launch of a Quantum-AI data center in New York City, located at Digital Realty’s JFK10 facility.

Both companies worked with NVIDIA to integrate superconducting quantum computers and AI supercomputing under one roof by deploying and integrating OQC’s GENESIS quantum computer and NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips.

This was followed in October 2025 with the announcement of work with NVIDIA on NVQLink, a groundbreaking open system architecture that provides real-time, low-latency connectivity between quantum and AI supercomputing systems. OQC plans to integrate its quantum hardware with NVIDIA accelerated computing to support the scalability of future systems.

The UK has a very healthy Quantum computing ecosystem.

Thanks to Government backing, prestigious universities and research institutions the UK is ranked third behind the US and China in size and maturity of its Quantum industry.

The UK’s National Quantum Landscape is coordinated by Innovate UK, the public body promoting the QC industry.

The UK National Quantum Computing Programme includes Quantum Hubs and the National Quantum Computing Centre. Activities span major UK universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham, Glasgow and UC which in September 2025 claimed the first quantum computing built using silicon chips.

The machine, built by the company Quantum Motion, is now installed at the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) in Oxfordshire.

Europe’s Quantum Strategy was announced in July 2025 with the aim of making the economic region a quantum computing powerhouse.

The Quantum Datacenter Alliance

The QDA is dedicated to “building datacenter-scale quantum computers capable of tackling the world’s most urgent problems.”

“This endeavour requires cross-industry collaboration and alignment across each layer of the computing stack: quantum processors, interconnects, entanglement network, middleware, system integration, software, algorithms, and applications.”

The Quantum Datacenter Alliance field of operations:

Interoperability
Quantum Interconnects
Quantum-Classical Interfaces
Classical Control & Orchestration
Systems Integration
Distributed Quantum Error Correction
Fault-Tolerant QC Use-Cases
Quantum Processing Units
Benchmarking
Standards
Scalability
Deployability
Facilities & Power Readiness
Applications

Powering and cooling quantum computing

Quantum systems are inherently fragile with minute changes causing destabilisation that destroys data integrity. The challenge for forward-thinking power design engineers is to consider how to support power, cooling and environmental control requirements of quantum infrastructure that are fundamentally different from that needed for classical cloud compute.

Quantum processors consume little power when compared with high density AI GPU systems or even classical CPU based computing. They are powered by a combination of conventional electrical infrastructure and specialised cryogenic systems, with most, but not all, architectures requiring ultra-low temperature cooling.

The infrastructure required to keep maintain QPU stability —specifically refrigeration — will use large amounts of power on a 24/7 basis. These systems will require Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) and battery systems to prevent data loss due to temperature fluctuations. The technologies placing new demand on power supply systems include cryogenic cooling, refrigerators, and control systems such as microwave generators, FPGAs, Digital Analogue Convertors and Analogue Digital Convertors.

Quantum computers are referred to as ‘chandeliers’ this is due to the appearance of the primary cooling technology known as Dilution Refrigerators that use a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4 isotopes to extract heat, reaching temperatures near absolute zero (-273.15°C).

Another cooling technology is Pulse Tube Refrigeration: These mechanical cryocoolers are used for higher-temperature stages (around 4 Kelvin), often working with dilution refrigerators to pre-cool the system without generating vibration-inducing moving parts. If quantum is to be deployed within existing data centre infrastructure the extreme cooling needed to operate error free quantum computation, (just above absolute zero) means the power draw will build significantly as systems scale.

Another topic of discussion among data centre electrical engineers is whether quantum computers can operate on the same power chains as those for traditional CPUs, High Performance Compute and AI GPUs. This is in part because to achieve fault tolerance physical quantum computers are highly sensitive and must be protected against environmental conditions including noise, vibration, and electromagnetic interference (EMI).

This may raise questions around the deployment of separate fully autonomous power and cooling redundant feeds into and within the building and new standby set ups.

Conclusion

The world of quantum computing is fantastically complex and there are many challenges to overcome before breakthroughs see the regular deployment of systems within cloud, commercial and enterprise data centres.

But just as AVK is delivering clean, sustainable power systems in response to AI hardware changes (rapidly shifting M+E infrastructure design thinking away from fixed, rigid topologies to flexible architectures), we also keep a watch on the horizon, to future technologies and types of workloads that will be deployed in data centres being built and powered today.