May 30, 2012. Swiss engineer ABB is targeting annual growth of 20-25 percent in the expanding data centre market by using more energy efficient direct current technology. Because DC technology makes fewer power conversions than AC and less equipment and space is needed, investment costs can also be lowered by 15 percent, ABB said. Companies and technology giants are having to build enormous facilities housing servers which feed this increasing global addiction to data and multimedia. This rapid adoption of cloud computing - where data and applications are stored on or hosted by remote computers via the Internet - is driving worldwide server demand. But with one data centre consuming the same amount of energy as 25,000 U.S. households and carbon emissions from data centres expected to quadruple by 2020, there is pressure to make them more efficient, ABB said. Using direct current power rather than traditional alternative current technology in its latest project for IT service provider Green in Lupfig, north central Switzerland, ABB has reduced energy consumption by 10 percent. ABB said the DC production market is estimated to be worth up to $30 billion.