The most cutting-edge municipal heating system in the world is being developed in Helsinki. The steam that gasps from historic downtown loft radiators in the midst of winter nights is the last remaining sign that New York City installed an early version of this type of district heating a century ago.
But that was before the invention of computers. Finland’s main city of Helsinki is setting the standard for a novel approach to district heating.
Hundreds of homes and businesses throughout the city will be heated by excess heat that is collected and pumped from hundreds of computer servers in a new underground data center.
Helsinki already employs district heating so its citizens don’t run the risk of freezing to death in its minus 30 Centigrade winters, similar to many other European towns (how do you think they obtained their 13% below 1990 levels of greenhouse gases).
At combined heat and power (CHP) plants, which generate both electricity and heat, water is heated centrally to a temperature of 115 degrees C before being piped directly to tens of thousands of local residences and public buildings.
However, as more and more data is being kept and regularly backed up online, data centers now provide a rich new green company growth opportunity. Globally, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by data centers using fossil fuels is increasing by 10% annually.
With the growth of cloud computing, more energy is required to cool data centers, which means more heat must be removed from them. Cloud computing currently consumes 3% of all electricity produced in the UK, for instance.
A trial program will start using waste heat produced by the Academica data center underneath the city in April. With the extra heat being pumped back into the city’s district heating system, the data center will be cooled using seawater from the Baltic, when temperatures drop below 8C from November to May.
Picture: Tuija
Origin: Business Times
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