For Large Tech, there are few higher locations to experiment with knowledge heart heating than within the Nordics. This concept works greatest when knowledge facilities will be related to preexisting district heating programs, the place a bunch of buildings share a typical heating system as an alternative of every having their very own. These communal programs are commonplace in nations like Denmark, Finland, and Sweden—and tech isn’t the primary trade to experiment with connecting to them.
For the previous 20 years, Patrik Öhlund’s residence within the northern Swedish metropolis of Luleå has been partly heated by the waste warmth from a close-by metal plant. Now, Öhlund, who’s director of Power Markets at Microsoft, is engaged on recreating this method within the Finnish metropolis of Espoo. However this time it’s Microsoft that’s being hooked as much as the native district heating community as a part of a challenge that may ultimately warmth 100,000 households. As soon as accomplished, it’s anticipated to be the biggest knowledge heart heating system on the earth.
Microsoft’s challenge in Espoo will generate barely hotter water—90 levels Fahrenheit (32.2 levels Celsius)—than Meta’s Danish system, partly as a result of the Finnish knowledge heart will even have the capability to energy AI programs. Finnish vitality firm Fortum will then increase the warmth to between 180 and 250 levels Fahrenheit (82.2 and 121.1 levels Celsius), earlier than it enters folks’s houses—which ought to occur someday after 2025. Warmth extracted from knowledge facilities that energy AI tends to be hotter as a result of they typically have a higher-density setup of server racks, says Tom Glover, head of knowledge heart transactions at actual property consultancy JLL. “You are supplied with a better high quality of warmth, which can be utilized higher inside district heating grids,” he provides.
When Microsoft’s Espoo system is switched on, vitality costs received’t essentially be cheaper, in line with Teemu Nieminen, who leads the info heart warmth restoration challenge for Fortum. Neither firm will disclose how a lot Microsoft is charging for the warmth, however they do verify it’s a part of a industrial association. It may not be cheaper, however costs must be extra steady, says Nieminen, “in comparison with fossil fuels, the place costs fluctuate very wildly.”
Microsoft additionally hopes this stability will assist make knowledge facilities on this scale extra welcome in native communities, a few of whom take situation with Large Tech sucking up big quantities of renewable energy. “It would maintain the costs steady, and with folks dwelling close by figuring out this … they’re additionally extra constructive to our knowledge facilities,” says Öhlund.
