Schneider Electric has released a study concluding that arc flash risk in 800-volt direct current (VDC) data center power systems can be managed and, in many cases, matches the safety profile of conventional alternating current (AC) systems, the company said.
The French energy technology firm supplies power distribution, industrial automation and data center equipment and software, including the ETAP power system simulation platform it majority owns.
The findings arrive as 800 VDC architectures gain adoption in AI data centers to support denser server racks beyond 400 kilowatts, a shift driven partly by NVIDIA’s push for higher power AI computing hardware. Unlike AC systems, converter-fed 800 VDC systems currently lack an industry-wide standard for managing arc flash hazards.
The study used ETAP’s simulation software and digital twins to model fault scenarios.
Two 800 VDC architectures were evaluated: a rack-level “sidecar” design and a centralized, facility-level design, both reflecting deployment patterns already used by major hyperscale operators.
The rack-level case study found incident energy remained well below the referenced 1.2 cal/cm² threshold for personal protective equipment (PPE), even without protection devices installed. The facility level design showed slightly higher incident energy under conservative assumptions with no overcurrent protection, though adding standard protection devices brought energy in line with typical AC architectures.
Capacitor discharge dominates the first milliseconds of a fault event, and standard assessment methods tend to overestimate risk in capacitor-dominated systems, the study found.
“800 VDC power distribution represents a significant shift in data center design, but it also introduces safety considerations that need to be studied extensively,” said Manish Kumar, executive vice president of secure power and data centers at Schneider Electric. “Our work with major hyperscalers provides engineers and safety professionals with one of the first practical frameworks for evaluating arc flash risks.”
“Industry standards remain essential for arc flash and electrical safety, but traditional methods can be overly conservative because they do not fully reflect how complex DC systems operate,” said Tanuj Khandelwal, chief executive of ETAP.
The study also found that fault locations upstream and downstream of reverse blocking diodes affected back-feed and peak current, shaping facility-level outcomes. Schneider Electric said the work builds on its history of arc flash safety testing, including validation of live swap power capabilities in 800 VDC systems.