Hyosung Goodsprings, Hyosung Group’s pump specialist affiliate, will supply high-efficiency cooling pumps to SK Telecom’s (SKT) artificial intelligence (AI) data center in Ulsan. The products reduce electricity consumption by adjusting the circulation volume of coolant used to remove heat from servers.
The company has secured supply orders covering the Ulsan data center’s 100-megawatt (MW) capacity. As SKT plans to expand its domestic AI data center capacity to 15 gigawatts (GW) by 2035, Hyosung Goodsprings’ cooling pump supply volume is also expected to increase.
According to industry sources on November 4, Hyosung Goodsprings has secured a contract to supply sensorless inline pumps for the 60MW second-phase facility, Building B, at SKT’s Ulsan AI data center, following the 40MW first-phase facility, Building A.
Sensorless inline pumps automatically adjust motor speed according to the servers’ cooling load. They increase speed when cooling demand is high and reduce it when demand is low. Because they do not need to operate continuously at maximum output, they can reduce unnecessary electricity consumption. Controlling operating conditions without separate flow sensors also simplifies equipment configuration and reduces maintenance requirements. ABB, the Swedish-Swiss power company, supplies the inverter integrated with the pump.
Hyosung Goodsprings has also added harmonic distortion monitoring to its sensorless inline pumps. Harmonic distortion measures how far an electrical waveform deviates from its normal shape. The function simplifies equipment management by allowing electrical conditions to be checked without separate measuring equipment.
The number of cooling pumps required increases with a data center’s power capacity. A 40MW data center uses approximately 20 to 30 pumps. Applying the same basis, SKT’s 100MW Ulsan data center would require more than 50 pumps. A set of pumps for a 40MW facility costs approximately 1.5 billion won, putting the estimated supply value for the 100MW Ulsan data center at around 4 billion won.
AI data centers generate substantial heat by operating large numbers of servers equipped with high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs). Overheating can reduce computing performance or cause equipment failures. This makes cooling equipment important.
Data center cooling equipment works by using coolant to absorb heat from servers and then discharge it outside. Cooling pumps circulate coolant through pipes and maintain the required flow rate. With cooling systems accounting for approximately 40% of a facility’s total energy consumption, pump efficiency is important for reducing operating costs.
Starting with Ulsan, SKT is expanding investment in domestic AI data centers. It plans to build AI data center clusters with more than 2GW in the Yeongnam region and 1GW in the southwestern region, and to increase domestic facility capacity gradually to 5GW starting in 2029. Its target is to expand total capacity to 15GW in 2035. Applying the same cooling equipment requirements, the value of the pumps needed could reach approximately 600 billion won.
Hyosung Goodsprings is expected to see substantial revenue growth if it also wins orders for SKT’s additional data centers. The company’s revenue in 2025 was 230.1 billion won, down slightly from 236.3 billion won in the previous year. Over the same period, operating profit increased approximately 48%, from 14.2 billion won to 20.9 billion won.
In addition to SKT, Hyosung Goodsprings has secured numerous domestic data center developers as customers. It also supplies cooling pumps to the 35MW internet data center (IDC) in Deogi-dong, Ilsan; the 80MW Hwaseong GPC IDC; the 50MW Ansan TIMBUKTU IDC; and the 25MW Ansan Global Cloud Center (GCC) IDC.
Hyosung Goodsprings is an unlisted affiliate wholly owned by Hyosung, with industrial pump manufacturing as its core business. In addition to data center cooling pumps, it produces large industrial pumps for oil refining, petrochemicals and power plants, as well as pumps for nuclear power plants. Its major customers include ExxonMobil and Aramco.
Original Korean article: The Elec
English brief by Korea Wind Intelligence, koreawindintel.com
