What does a telco need for 400 VDC to find a place in the central office 400 volts: Even though the technology isn´t quite here yet, it´s not just for data centers anymore

There´s little doubt that 400 volts (nominal) is coming. Which architecture wins the race depends on the lifecycle cost of deploying the system and whatever politicking governs decisions in a particular carrier´s engineering department. Very clearly, one of the weightiest factors in total cost of ownership is the system end-to-end efficiency. The number of power conversions between the building service entrance and the electronic systems actually using the power figures mightily in overall efficiency. Since most electronic circuit boards utilize 5 volts, 12 Volts or some similar dc potential, virtually all electronic systems employ a power supply to convert whatever is the supply voltage to the board level voltage(s). For data center systems the source voltages are 120 VAC and 208 VAC or other potentials depending on where in the world the systems will be deployed. The development of embedded dc to dc converters that will convert a nominal 400 volts dc to server board level voltages paves the way for so-called high voltage dc data centers and as of this writing it´s believed that such soon will be the case.