The excess heat generated by the new data centers of microsoft in Finland it will be used to heat homes, shops and offices in the Helsinki metropolitan area. A) Yes made it known the Redmond corporation, which allied itself 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 be capture all the waste heat generated from cooling the servers and redirect it to different cities. Specifically, Espoo, Kauniainen, and Kirkkonummi.
The procedure is really striking. According to the Finnish company, the heat obtained from the Microsoft facilities will be distributed through a district heating structure, which consists of more than 900 kilometers of pipes undergroundin the form of hot water.
Microsoft’s project in Finland is the largest ever conceived in the world to recycle waste heat generated by data centers. Fortum also assures that the Americans chose the place where they will install the new server structure already thinking about a plan to reuse surplus heat.
sanna marin, 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. It will speed up Finland’s digital growth and make our energy system greener,” she said.
Finland to reuse excess heat from Microsoft data centers
What Microsoft and Fortum are proposing 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 thousand tons per year.
It has not yet been reported 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 up and running, 60% of heating in the region will come from renewable energies; and 40% of this will be 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. Let’s 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 in a boiling state.
Under this modality, the company’s engineers ensure that it is possible lower the power consumption of any server by 15%. If we consider the brutal magnitude of these hardware structures, without a doubt it is a very important 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 undersea server infrastructure; it will be located off the coast of Hainan province, although it could only start operating within the next five years.
Those in charge of the project in the Asian giant want to prove that cold sea water could be key to reducing cooling costs and the impact that data centers have on electrical power networks. It is estimated that 70% of the operating costs of a data center in Chinese territory correspond to the use of electricity.
