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Data centre combined heat and compute facilities – the future normal ?
Astrid Wynne , Techbuyer Sustainability Lead and Chair of the Sustainability SIG at the Data Centre Alliance , explores in depth David Gyulnazaryan ’ s recent discussion about the practicalities of reducing carbon with effective heat management , and why Techbuyer is particularly interested in how this can be applied to heat and energy as well as the IT hardware and associated materials .
David Gyulnazaryan is focused on data centre heat reuse – Combined Heat Compute and decarbonisation , which he believes is the basis of making data centres part of a circular , decarbonised economy . He works towards an integrated approach to creating sustainable data centres with the lowest scope 1 , 2 and 3 GHG emissions .
The first law of thermodynamics , also known as the law of conservation of energy , states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed , but changes from one form to another . The electrical energy that data centres draw through the servers is almost entirely converted to heat . Data generation is a biproduct of this , but accounts for less than 0.1 % of the conversion , which means that the term ‘ data centre ’ is a misnomer in energy terms . It is more accurate to call them ‘ heat centres ’ which can also be used to process and store information . Flipping thinking in this way allows us to be more creative about how we plan and manage data centre builds now and – much more importantly – in the future .
David Gyulnazaryan is somewhat of an evangelist for Combined Heat Compute and decarbonisation . His recent talk at Data Centre World London attracted a crowd of 200 people to a side theatre , who were interested in the practicalities of reducing carbon with effective heat management . As an organisation that is committed to the Circular Economy , Techbuyer has been interested in how this can be applied to heat and energy as well as the IT hardware and associated materials . It has been interesting to discuss this with Gyulnazaryan .
One of Gyulnazaryan ’ s initial points is that the shift in thinking requires a holistic view of heat generation at district level , in which data centres are one moving part . Low grade heat is supplemented by heat from other industrial sources such as biofuels , geothermal heading , energy from waste and others , as shown below . It is a systemsbased approach that is best integrated into town planning . With the data centre sector expected to grow by 500 % globally by 2050 , this is not such a stretch for the future as it may appear today .
The concept of heat reuse is not a new one . Lefdal Mine Datacenter in Norway runs a cooling system using 9 ° C water from a fjord through the cooling system and delivers 20 ° C water to a nearby salmon farm . Green Mountain operates a similar system in Norway to feed a trout farm . EcoDataCenter operating in Sweden is designed to pump heat into www . intelligentdatacentres . com
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