The Aquatic Center for the Olympics at Paris was heated with a unique source – heat from Equinix data centers. From the Equinix blog
Conventionally, data center operators remove residual heat generated from cooling IT equipment and reject this heat to the atmosphere. In a common scenario, fans carry air heated by the IT equipment to the data center’s air conditioning system, where this heat is transferred from the air to water. The warmed water is then transported to the data center cooling system which rejects the residual heat from the building.
When data center operators incorporate heat export from their data centers, they transfer a portion of this heat to a third-party heat network via a heat exchanger instead of rejecting all the residual heat to the atmosphere. The heat exchanger keeps water in the data center cooling system separate from water in the infrastructure owned and operated by the heat network operator.
In many cases, the heat network operator uses a heat pump to increase the water temperature so it’s suitable for the community heat requirements. Then, they distribute the heated water via underground pipes which are typically installed under roads and sidewalks.
These projects launched in Helsinki in 2010 to provide heat for homes. Now, Equinix is extending this to Toronto for home heating as well as water heating.
Data centers are frequently at the cutting edge of energy innovation because of their intensive and consistent needs. This is another great example of that.
It is an elegant solution to divert excess energy (in the form of heat) to other uses. Given data centers are only going to grow over time, this could be the man-made equivalent of a geothermal source. It has a lot of potential to be scaled.
I’m impressed at the ingenuity. Well played, Equinix.
