FEATURE
THE NEXT
GENERATION OF
DATA CENTRES
SHOULD, BY
DESIGN, UTILISE
RESOURCES
EFFECTIVELY,
WHILE ENSURING
SEAMLESS
INTEGRATION
WITH THEIR
SMART CITY
ECOSYSTEM:
SMART GRIDS
AND HEATING
NETWORKS.
day, a data centre is nothing else but a
system where electricity comes in and
heat comes out. Heat that in most cases
is being just rejected to the surrounding
environment, wasted. But looking at the
energy flows within a data centre, a new
series of solutions can emerge.
A data centre can optimise both its design
and operations to deliver heat to local
heating (and cooling) networks. They
can recover, redistribute and reuse their
residual heat for building space heating
(residential and non-residential such as
hospitals, hotels, greenhouses and pools),
service hot water and industrial processes.
Depending on the cooling technology in
use, the data centre may harvest heat at
the desirable temperature level. In any
case, a heat pump may be in place to
increase, as necessary, the low calorific
heat generated by the data centre before
its delivery to the heat grid. The data
centre may also be able to adjust its
server room temperature set points to
increase the amount of thermal energy
generated. A data centre may capitalise
on the use of a heat storage, such as a
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Issue 02
thermal energy storage system, to store
heat during the summer and deliver it to
the heat grid during the winter in addition
to the direct heat normally supplied,
increasing its heat capacity.
The main barrier in these scenarios is
actually raised by local policies, operations
and infrastructures that may or may
not be in place to enable recovery,
redistribution and reuse of residual heat.
So, it also falls on the shoulders of the
local communities and area developers.
There are examples where indeed all
stakeholders work together to ensure data
centres can integrate their own operations
to the needs and wants of other sectors,
linking their commons (B2B).
Such an example is the Green Datacentre
Campus in the Amsterdam Metropolitan
Area, with the Schiphol Area Development
www.intelligentdatacentres.com