The excess heat generated by the new data centers of microsoft in Finland it will be used for heating homes, shops and offices in the Helsinki metropolitan area. This was announced by the Redmond company, which has teamed up with Fortum, the Finnish state-owned energy company.
Microsoft plans to build the data centers in question in the southern region of Finland, and they will run entirely on clean energy. What Fortum will do will be capture all the waste heat generated by server cooling and redirect it to different cities. Specifically, Espoo, Kauniainen and Kirkkonummi.
The procedure is truly striking. According to the Finnish company, the heat obtained from the Microsoft facilities will be distributed through a district heating structure, made up of more than 900 kilometers of underground pipelinesin the form of hot water.
Microsoft’s project in Finland is the world’s largest to recycle waste heat generated by data centers. Fortum also assures that the Americans have chosen the place where they will install the new server structure by already thinking of a plan for reusing excess heat.
sanna sailor, the Prime Minister of Finland, was enthusiastic about this initiative. “The decision to invest in a data center that also provides surplus heat to our cities and homes is a win-win situation. It will accelerate Finland’s digital growth and make our energy system greener,” said she declared.
Finland to reuse excess heat from Microsoft data centers
What Microsoft and Fortum are offering is a demonstration of how you can try to exploit every possible margin of clean energy available. In the case of the Finnish district heating system, the reuse of waste heat from data centers will reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the Helsinki metropolitan area in about 400,000 tons per year.
It has not yet been announced when the infrastructure of the North American company will start operating in Finland, but there will surely be news in the short term. Once the structure is operational, 60% of the region’s heating will come from renewable energies; and 40% of that will come from data centers and other waste heat sources.
Thus, those led by Satya Nadella add one more initiative to reduce the environmental impact of their data centers. Remember that Microsoft is experimenting with a cooling system that consists of submerging its servers; this is done with a fluorocarbon-based liquid that is boiling.
Under this modality, the company’s engineers ensure that it is possible reduce the power consumption of any server by 15%. Considering the brutal scale of these material structures, this is undoubtedly a very significant reduction.
Of course, Microsoft isn’t the only company working to make its data centers more energy efficient. China has also implemented a plan to build its own submarine server infrastructure; it will be located off the coast of Hainan Province, although it may not start operating for another five years.
Project managers at the Asian giant want to prove that cold seawater could be the key to reducing cooling costs and the impact of data centers on power grids. It is estimated that 70% of the operating costs of a data center on Chinese territory correspond to the use of electricity.
