Canadian Data Centre Landscape: Q&A with Jim Kalogiros of Schneider Electric

April 20, 2026

In this article we talk to Jim Kalogiros, Vice President of Secure Power at Schneider Electric Canada about the data centre landscape in Canada. Kalogiros unpacks how Schneider approaches data centre projects, in particular looking at how to improve efficiency with software and hardware upgrades. He touches on the opportunity available to electrical contractors in the data centre market, as well as the importance of thorough planning at the onset of the project to mitigate supply chain delays.

Currently, the data centre market is made up of large-scale facilities, and a key challenge is procuring power. Looking forward, Kalogiros mentions data centres will move closer to the consumer on a smaller scale to support businesses and organizations that rely on data and AI.

“Anywhere that someone’s going to put in some sort of AI inference or model, that’s going to help drive efficiencies in their business,” Kalogiros said, “is going to require a micro data center.” This could include industrial automation, commercial, institutional, and educational facilities, retail and law firms, for example. Which, Kalogiros emphasized as an emerging trend electrical contractors should be aware of moving forward.

What are some of the key challenges from your perspective when it comes to the data center market in Canada and how is Schneider helping address some of those challenges?

JK: Basically, in Canada specifically, we’re seeing some major utility constraints on the grid.

Anywhere they’re looking to build large hyperscale or large data centers, the sentiment right now is, not enough power or can’t get access to utility power.

So, what are some of the things that can be done to help these data center providers get their facilities up and running in a timely fashion and also with the amount of power that’s necessary?

There’s a couple of things that we do to support them from a Schneider standpoint.

We obviously look at their current facilities and drive all the efficiencies that we can out of those facilities, meaning getting rid of any wasted phantom loads, look at how we upgrade their current equipment so that they’re running at a much more efficient standard than they were in the past.

A lot of the old buildings are wasting a lot of electrical capacity.

If you’re looking at building a – let’s call it a 10 megawatt or even a gigawatt data center, these days, a lot of that power is stranded. It’s not being utilized.

We try to find the most effective ways to use anywhere between 90 and 100% of that capacity. That way they’re not losing any of their electricity.

So, what we do today is on existing facilities is, we look at what they currently have. We do an audit and we identify how much wasted electricity is at the site and we find ways to drive efficiencies and use that excess power so that way they don’t necessarily have to go to the grid right away.

We optimize what they have and then we plan for future expansion by either looking at alternative fuel sources, different energy creation products such as generation of power using natural gas, nuclear, or even solar.

How do you approach improving efficiency?

JK: What we’ll do is… we’ll install software tools that are going to go out and take inventory of what’s being utilized and how effectively it’s being utilized.

What we also do is look at upgrading their gear.

If you were to look at a data center that was built a few years ago or even five, six years ago, a lot of the equipment that’s operating in there, whether it be cooling equipment or even UPSs, there’s inefficiencies in that equipment.

So, upgrading that gear to have it run more effectively or more efficiently is one of the aspects. And the other part of it is definitely analytics.

Right now, we’ve even got a product called Cooling Optimized. What you’ll find is a lot of these data centers utilize a lot of cooling products, whether it be chilled water, liquid to chip, whatever it may be. And a lot of those devices are just running out 100% all day. What the analytical software will do is, it’ll go out and take an inventory of whether or not that cooling piece of equipment needs to operate because the equipment that its cooling isn’t necessarily running at that time in the day.

It scales the cooling units down, which uses less electricity, less water, way more efficient, and then it’ll scale them up when that equipment requires cooling.

In doing that analytical piece, we’re able to save 30, 40% on electricity and 30, 40% on water utilization.

So, there’s a couple of different tools that we use, software being one of the main ones, and then, obviously, equipment to drive more efficiency on the actual equipment.

How does Schneider work with electrical contractors on data centre projects?

JK: Well, I think it’s important to understand that data centers, I’d say more than 50, 60% of the equipment and work that happens in those facilities is electrically intensified, right? So, we are very much hand in hand with the electrical contractors and the general contractors on site.

We are there for all the startups of the equipment. We’re there to kind of help identify how they should be connected, networked, et cetera. We work very closely with the trade community inside each of these facilities.

The customer is the one that selects the electrical contractors that are going to be doing all the work. But we are absolutely collaborating on every single one of these builds with that community as well as the mechanical community. They lean on the manufacturer heavily to provide intelligence on what the best way to kind of set this equipment up is, how to quickly execute and start it up in a safe manner.

What kind of opportunity is there for electrical contractors in the data centre space?

JK: Look, I’d say that it is going to be one of the largest business opportunities for electrical contractors in the next five to 10 years.

And it’s not necessarily just the data centers space specifically, because that is a huge component, when you’re building out these major hyperscale facilities, which are, like I mentioned, very heavily electrically intensified to require a ton of labor and electricians.

But there’s the downstream of this large data center AI development.

We’ve got the hyperscale facilities, and then we have the edge. The opportunity is going to really trickle into the market, it’s going to trickle to the actual businesses. So, law firms, education, post-secondary and K-through-12 educational systems, it’s going to get into retail… anywhere that someone’s going to put in some sort of AI inference or model that’s going to help drive efficiencies in their business is going to require a micro data center.

And there’s going to be thousands of these and that’s going to require electricians to go in and outfit these facilities.

I would encourage electricians and electrical contractors to look at other avenues that they could pursue other than commercial, residential. This is definitely going to be a very, very big part of the economy.

Alberta introduced new data centre rules that prioritize projects that supply their own power… Is that a positive sign?

JK: I think it’s a positive sign, for sure.

I think municipalities, provinces, federal government needs to look at how we encourage these facilities to be built in Canada. You know, there’s a data sovereignty piece to this that we need to consider. But we all know that we’re constrained by what the utilities in the grid have available. And it’s not a function of them not wanting to give power.

So, there’s a couple of things that need to happen to help bridge that gap.

And one of those bridges is giving the ability to the customer to go ahead and start finding alternative sources of power, whether it be bringing their own power, whether it be tapping into the natural gas resources and having generation done that way, whether it be building microgrids or solar panel farms to help facilitate and supplement their data centers.

All of those tools are, I think, going to need to be available to these companies so that they can kind of maintain or build until the grid gets up to where it needs to be able to support more power from a utility standpoint.

We want to complement those communities, and we don’t want to necessarily put them under pressure, right? I think what Alberta is doing is the right approach currently until we optimize and build out the grid more.

Are there any other nuances of the market that you would like to speak to from your perspective?

JK: The only last kind of comment I will leave you with is that, you know, with the amount of data center development that’s happening globally, North America specifically, for us, there’s definitely constraints that are going to be felt by customers and by contractors and by distributors.

It is imperative that there’s a lot of planning that goes into these facilities, meaning, you know, you got to think about allocation of equipment, you got to think about how you plan the development and deployment and execution of these facilities. And that is critical to happen early on before a shovel even gets put in the ground.

If customers are looking to explore building these facilities, the planning aspect of it is the most critical aspect of it. Because if you plan it effectively, efficiently, and you bring the right partners in place, whether it be contractors, general contractors, manufacturers, and customers, then the execution becomes a lot more seamless.

You know, getting equipment today is one of the bottlenecks, right? Because everybody’s building, so they’re all buying the same gear. Getting access to the equipment, is a function of planning effectively.

And I think that is one of the aspects that we need to kind of highlight for not only contractors, but also customers, is that it’s important and imperative that you start having early discussions with manufacturers and with your contractors to start planning out long lead items.

What’s going to be the bottlenecks in the development and deployment of these facilities, and how do we solve for some of those problems?

And I think if we do that, then I think we solve a lot of the other issues downstream.