E X P E R T O P I N I O N

Renewable power sources therefore offer the potential to substantially reduce emissions while supporting power and heat sharing with local utilities . Having more data centres closer to urban areas will significantly facilitate local recovery and export of heat energy to the community .

The latest generation of cooling systems have the ability to seamlessly upgrade heat exported from data centres and create a carbon-free heat source to assist district heating systems . New cooling solutions for higher power densities additionally assist heat recovery efficiency via their higher operating temperatures , while removing the need for evaporative cooling , conserving water usage in the local community .

In 2023 , for example , the City of Eschborn and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit ( GIZ ) GmbH in Germany signed an agreement with nLighten for heat exported from its Edge data centre at high temperatures . The recovered heat warms the public swimming pool complex and several city buildings , contributing positively to the local energy infrastructure .

Grid stabilisation

Renewable energy sourcing and on-site renewable generation including solar , wind , biogas and hydrogen solutions have become key factors in data centre design , but the utility sector has been busy with these for even longer .

The energy transition requires an increasing amount of renewable generation which is often weatherdependent . This results in a variable grid capacity and regular mismatches between the supply and demand of grid power , particularly in event of weather forecasting errors . A constant data centre load profile is therefore increasingly incompatible with an increasingly renewable grid .

The solution is the deployment of grid balancing systems . These can use energy storage systems and onsite generation to support the grid in times of over or under capacity , creating a varied load profile to assist renewable grid energy . The increasing scale of data centre power systems offers enormous potential to reduce grid dependence on fossil fuel power plants during periods of frequency deviation .

Using carbon neutral on-site generation and energy storage , nLighten ’ s is evolving its data centres such that they support utilities in their energy transition . This creates a synergy between the growth of data centres for the digital economy and emissions reduction in the utility sector .

In summary , data centre leaders are at the forefront of delivering holistic solutions to climate and energy challenges , helping themselves as well as their customers and the energy sector to achieve their sustainability goals . �

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