{"id":40712,"date":"2021-07-27T07:39:02","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T11:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?post_type=emagazine&p=40712"},"modified":"2021-09-21T03:45:03","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T07:45:03","slug":"data-center-heat-recycling","status":"publish","type":"emagazine","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/data-center-heat-recycling\/40712\/","title":{"rendered":"How Ireland is using waste heat from data centers to warm homes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Home to the physical servers that keep the Cloud aloft, data centers have become vital pieces of global IT infrastructure. These centers now provide computing horsepower for billions of connected devices<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But our digitized world needs a lot of energy to function. Data centers consume over 1 percent of the world\u2019s electricity<\/a>. With thousands of servers to run and keep cool, large data centers can use as much electricity as a small city<\/a>. Ireland\u2019s favorable geography and regulation have so far attracted over 70 data centers,<\/a> powering global Cloud services for tech giants like Microsoft and TikTok.<\/p>\n

Managing the energy footprint of data centers is a challenge that will only grow. Ireland\u2019s energy regulator says data centers could use almost 30 percent of the country\u2019s electricity by 2027<\/a>, endangering climate goals.<\/p>\n

Adding to the energy toll, over 75 percent of data center electricity becomes waste heat<\/a>. Could the way data centers act like giant radiators help reduce some of their climate impact?<\/p>\n\t\t\t

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Data centers make great heaters<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ireland\u2019s weather is famously cold and wet at almost any time of year. Keeping homes and businesses warm, mostly using gas or oil boilers, makes up nearly a third of Ireland\u2019s carbon emissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For John O\u2019Shea, Energy Systems Analyst at Dublin energy agency Codema<\/a>, the synergy between Ireland\u2019s heating needs and its data centers\u2019 waste heat is clear. \u201cIn winter, a data center can provide heating up to 85 degrees Celsius similar to a gas boiler, with better energy efficiency than a heat pump in a new house.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Shea and his team are part of the Tallaght District Heating Scheme<\/a> through the EU-funded Heat Net project<\/a>. And it\u2019s on track to turn data center heat waste into a sustainable heat source for the Dublin suburb\u2019s homes and businesses. From 2022, water cooling servers in Tallaght\u2019s Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center will be upcycled through a new district heating network.<\/p>\n

Flowing through a circular network of pipes and heat pumps, the data center\u2019s waste heat will warm a university campus, municipal buildings and several thousand homes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A new way to approach an old solution<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As a way to heat buildings collectively in urban areas, district heating schemes are nothing new. In Scandinavia, the 1970s oil crisis made sustainable heating a priority for urban planners. In Copenhagen, almost 95 percent of heating comes from reused waste heat<\/a> from factories and other heat emitters. Although data centers have been used to power existing district heating networks in Scandinavia, Tallaght might be first to build a new heating network around a data center.<\/p>\n

Using data center waste heat to provide low cost, sustainable heating is a rare win-win climate solution. O\u2019Shea says, \u201cFrom phase one, we\u2019ll save 1,500 tonnes of CO2 each year by using something that\u2019s otherwise vented into the atmosphere.\u201d He thinks the solution has global potential, pointing to a paper he co-authored showing unconventional heat sources like data centers could provide 10 percent of the EU\u2019s total heating and hot water<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With efficient heating comes efficient cooling<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The district heating program also helps reduce another big environmental impact of data centers: Water use. Many data centers use evaporated water to cool servers. At peak times, one data center can use over a million liters of water a day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When data centers are part of district heating systems, recycling heat in a closed-loop system, they waste far less water.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In return for transferring waste heat to the network, the center gets cooler water back, reducing or even removing the need for evaporation cooling.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Shea says the system\u2019s benefits go even further. \u201cBecause our network is always monitoring heat output, we\u2019ve got an extra set of eyes on the health of the data center cooling system.\u201d This extra monitoring could save money and hardware damage \u2013 a recent study of 41 data centers by leading digital infrastructure provider Vertiv found the average cost of a downtime event was over 506,000 US dollars. The most common cause was power or cooling failures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Beyond district heating<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Paul Deane, a researcher fellow at Ireland\u2019s MaREI Environment Research Institute<\/a>,<\/u> agrees the Tallaght heating solution has big potential but notes combining data centers with district heating \u201cis not a magic bullet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deane points out that in Ireland alone, data centers may contribute \u201caround 1 million tonnes [of C02] each year by 2030.\u201d He thinks data center energy use demands a combined approach. \u201cWe need proactive solutions like district heating and other measures like greater renewable energy use and carbon offsetting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some in the Irish parliament have described growing numbers of data centers when the government is reaffirming its commitment to a carbon-neutral future as \u201cout of control,\u201d<\/a> but Deane sees a silver lining. \u201cYou can look at data centers in two ways: As part of the problem or part of the solution. I like to look at them as a solution.\u201d He adds, \u201cWe need data centers, but we also need them to be cleaner.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Deane, proactive solutions like Tallaght\u2019s district heating system are a step in the right direction. With free heat from an industrial by-product and dramatically reduced CO2 emissions and water use, it\u2019s hard to argue with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data centers use a lot of energy, but they also produce a lot of heat. One Dublin suburb is experimenting with reusing that waste heat in businesses and homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2661,"featured_media":40715,"template":"","coauthors":[4155],"class_list":{"0":"post-40712","1":"emagazine","2":"type-emagazine","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"emagazine-category-tech-for-good","7":"emagazine-tag-climate-change","8":"emagazine-tag-environment","9":"emagazine-tag-sustainability"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/data-center-heat-recycling\/40712\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/data-center-heat-recycling\/25064\/"}],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/emagazine\/40712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/emagazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/emagazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=40712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}