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Underground datacenter in Helsinki to warm residents above
Monday, 15 March 2010, 17:15 IST
Bangalore: Excess heat from hundreds of computer servers in a new underground datacenter in Helsinki will be captured and pumped to heat hundreds of homes and businesses throughout the city, reports Business Times.
Like many European cities, Helsinki already uses district heating so that its residents don't risk freezing to death in its minus 30 Centigrade winters. Water is heated centrally at combined heat and power (CHP) plants that supply both electricity and heat, to heat water to 115 degrees C, and pipe it directly to tens of thousands of nearby apartments and public buildings.
But now, datacenters comprise a new and growing opportunity for a lucrative new green business development there, as more and more data is stored and backed-up several times online. Globally, greenhouse gas emissions from datacenters powered by fossil fuels are rising by 10 percent a year.
According to Business Times, with the rise of cloud computing, more energy is needed to cool datacenters, and more heat created by them must be siphoned off. At this point, in the UK for example, cloud computing now uses three percent of all the electricity generated in Britain.
Beginning this April, a pilot program will be fueled by waste heat generated by the Academica datacenter under the city. The datacenter will be cooled using sea water from the Baltic, which falls below eight Centigrade from November to May, with the excess heat pumped back into the city's district heating system.
