“An Introduction to Data Centre Heat Reuse,” a new White Paper from EUDCA

“An Introduction to Data Centre Heat Reuse,” says author Alessandro Zerbetto, “is written to provide a useful and accessible overview of what heat reuse is, some of its main applications, and how heat can be recovered from a data centre. It also provides an introduction to current legislative and regulatory initiatives that support or mandate exhaust heat recovery schemes.”

Making the point that generally, current data centre waste heat temperatures are not high enough for many use cases without the addition of systems to further elevate recovered heat temperature, a well-designed heat reuse system can not only improve the energy efficiency of a facility, but also reduce the overall energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with traditional heating and cooling methods.

Quoting Euroheat and Power, the white paper states the EU’s total forecasted heat demand by 2025 will be 1850 TWh/ year. Waste heat from Europe’s data centres could make a major contribution to meeting this demand, providing 221 TWh/ year or 12 percent of the total requirement. According to the report there are 997 data centres in the EU-28 located within 2km of a district heating network and generating more than 75 TWh/ year of accessible excess heat.

“Reusing heat from data centres is not just an environmental imperative,” says Marie Chabanon, Deputy Chair of the EUDCA Technical Committee, “it is also an economic and social opportunity, with the power to transform energy consumption into sustainable innovation.”

However, one of the biggest challenges is achieving balance between the heat demand of the environment with the availability of waste heat from the data centre. Data centres tend to produce heat at times when most cooling is required, i.e., when outdoor temperatures are hot. In winter, when European temperatures are usually at their

lowest, data centres avail of free cooling availability to reduce facility power consumption and energy costs and also exhaust heat output.

Other challenges to heat reuse include the physical distance between data centres and the applications requiring the heat, and the capital and operating expenses for infrastructure including heat exchangers, piping and control systems, and in some cases equipment such as water-to-water heat pumps. It Is unclear whether these costs should be funded by the data centre operator or the waste heat consumer.

An Introduction to Data Centre Heat Reuse was written and reviewed by members of the EUDCA Technical Committee, including Alessandro Zerbetto of Vertiv (author), Tanja Gutgesell and Benoit Ploux (Vantage Data Centres), Noah Nkonge and Billy McHallum (Equinix), Marie Chabanon and Linda Lescuyer (Data4), and Steven Parker (Global Switch).