Finally a good use for microsoft software: heating. If there is something Microsoft does good, that is heating. Teams might be slow and full of bugs, excel might be terrible but hey, the laptop is warm and this is all that counts.
While in SE Asia I would dual boot Windows specifically to drive out the ants that had found a home in my laptop. I could never get the same result with the Linux install I had at the time.
I love shitting on M$ as much as the next neckbeard but how is Excel terrible? It is still the world standard when it comes to GUI spreadsheet software and all of the other competitors are at best acceptable facsimiles up till they reach a certain cell count that Excel is capable of far exceeding.
No argument from me on Teams though. That is a dumpster fire.
I think the main motivation for this in both Espoo and the neighbouring Helsinki is the cities' 2030 carbon neutrality pledges. From the data center's point of view, I wonder if the price they get paid for the heat is significant. Here's the public price list for recovered waste heat in Helsinki (around 30 EUR/MWh): https://www.helen.fi/en/companies/heating-for-companies/open...
In Helsinki, I'm already buying my certified zero-emission heat from a big 100MW heat pump station that uses waste water among its inputs. In June, they are also adding heat from a Telia data center as an input to the district heating system. They give some numbers too: "Using a heat pump, the data centre can produce at least 1.3 times the heat that it consumes as electricity." https://www.helen.fi/en/news/2021/konesalien-hukkal%C3%A4mm%...
Years ago I did some process and project management consulting for a big powertrain manufacturer in Maryland. They used to be (part of) an American company, but as time passed the became a unit of a Swedish one.
Power train manufacturers have, by necessity, something they called test cells. They're rooms where an engine can be attached to a dummy shaft and run to evaluate changes to design, or test assumptions, or any of a million other things.
In Maryland, no attempt was made to capture the work done by these engines, nor was any attempt made to get value from the (hot!) exhaust.
At a similar facility in Sweden, though, the test cell engine output was tied to a power generation and storage setup, and the exhaust was captured to heat the building.
They were built at the same time. It's always baffled me.
Almost certainly due to different regulatory regimes.
One would have accounted for the pollution and costs and the other wouldn't basically instructing the corporation to be wasteful and pollute unless it wanted to lose money by doing so.
This is so obvious the real question is why this isn't the default everywhere.
Heating is one of the bigger challenges regarding the energy transition, and a big user of fossil gas (and sometimes oil, coal and talking about Finland even peat, which is really one of the dirtiest energy sources imaginable). Datacenters generate lots of "waste" heat.
It requires some planning, e.g. datacenters need to be built with connections to heat grids. But given how many new datacenters get built basically everywhere, this should be a no-brainer.
I'm guessing heating demand elsewhere is a bit less than as it would be in Finland. Also, Finland has a lot of infrastructure for heating in the form of city and district heating. So, it's pretty easy to connect to that and start dumping heat in it. That's not true everywhere and often the best places for data centers are not necessarily that close to population centers with district heating. For example in the Netherlands, Google and others operate data centers in a pretty remote area where wind energy is cheap and where there happens to be a major fiber optic cable coming into the country.
For new data centers, being carbon neutral or negative is pretty much a standard goal at this point for quite some time. Not only is it good for the environment but it also lowers cost and high energy costs are of course a problem if you are using lots of energy. The cheapest energy happens to be also the cleanest; hence a lot of data centers would be enthusiastic adopters of anything related to cheaper and cleaner energy. Additionally, a lot of energy is transformed into heat in the process of using it, so cooling solutions are also in scope for this.
Most data center operators are working towards carbon neutrality and have been for years. Many actually have web pages advertising their goals and current status for this. It's mainly their older data centers that are a problem on this front as those still rely on energy from the grid in places where that arguably isn't very green (like Virginia for example).
IMHO given how rich Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are, they could spend more to speed that process up and should maybe be coerced into doing so by the countries that host them under very charitable tax conditions (like my home country the Netherlands). MS seems very pleased with themselves with this data center. But of course they are still happily burning fossil fuels elsewhere.
I believe district heating is unfortunately not very common outside Northern, and to an extent, Central Europe, so there's not often anything to connect the heat output to.
IBM Zurich did something similar a few years ago. Recognising the limitations of the Carnot efficiency when trying to scavenge energy from data centres, they opted to recognise the economic value of warm water for district heating.
I reuse heat produced by my server room. Don't have to be M$ for this. Clean warm air is good for heating your house, drying your laundry, etc. etc. etc.
I am more interested in how are they doing it. Heat loss during transfer? How much Economic value coming out of it ( heating )? How far are those homes from the Data Center?
Don't worry, if it ever came to that, Bill Gates himself will swoop in to protect his beloved Microsoft with his futuristic super yacht that is transformable into a giant battle mech[1].
[+] [-] hulitu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjpnz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vimacs2|4 years ago|reply
No argument from me on Teams though. That is a dumpster fire.
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drcongo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] absozero|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuukkah|4 years ago|reply
In Helsinki, I'm already buying my certified zero-emission heat from a big 100MW heat pump station that uses waste water among its inputs. In June, they are also adding heat from a Telia data center as an input to the district heating system. They give some numbers too: "Using a heat pump, the data centre can produce at least 1.3 times the heat that it consumes as electricity." https://www.helen.fi/en/news/2021/konesalien-hukkal%C3%A4mm%...
[+] [-] ubermonkey|4 years ago|reply
Power train manufacturers have, by necessity, something they called test cells. They're rooms where an engine can be attached to a dummy shaft and run to evaluate changes to design, or test assumptions, or any of a million other things.
In Maryland, no attempt was made to capture the work done by these engines, nor was any attempt made to get value from the (hot!) exhaust.
At a similar facility in Sweden, though, the test cell engine output was tied to a power generation and storage setup, and the exhaust was captured to heat the building.
They were built at the same time. It's always baffled me.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|4 years ago|reply
One would have accounted for the pollution and costs and the other wouldn't basically instructing the corporation to be wasteful and pollute unless it wanted to lose money by doing so.
[+] [-] moltke|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hannob|4 years ago|reply
Heating is one of the bigger challenges regarding the energy transition, and a big user of fossil gas (and sometimes oil, coal and talking about Finland even peat, which is really one of the dirtiest energy sources imaginable). Datacenters generate lots of "waste" heat.
It requires some planning, e.g. datacenters need to be built with connections to heat grids. But given how many new datacenters get built basically everywhere, this should be a no-brainer.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|4 years ago|reply
For new data centers, being carbon neutral or negative is pretty much a standard goal at this point for quite some time. Not only is it good for the environment but it also lowers cost and high energy costs are of course a problem if you are using lots of energy. The cheapest energy happens to be also the cleanest; hence a lot of data centers would be enthusiastic adopters of anything related to cheaper and cleaner energy. Additionally, a lot of energy is transformed into heat in the process of using it, so cooling solutions are also in scope for this.
Most data center operators are working towards carbon neutrality and have been for years. Many actually have web pages advertising their goals and current status for this. It's mainly their older data centers that are a problem on this front as those still rely on energy from the grid in places where that arguably isn't very green (like Virginia for example).
IMHO given how rich Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are, they could spend more to speed that process up and should maybe be coerced into doing so by the countries that host them under very charitable tax conditions (like my home country the Netherlands). MS seems very pleased with themselves with this data center. But of course they are still happily burning fossil fuels elsewhere.
[+] [-] Sharlin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knolan|4 years ago|reply
https://www.edn.com/made-in-ibm-labs-ibm-hot-water-cooled-su...
[+] [-] perlgeek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IYasha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|4 years ago|reply
And if something similar being done in Iceland?
[+] [-] doikor|4 years ago|reply
The heat is moved into the already existing district heating system. So basically Fortum can burn less coal or gas during the winter with this.
[+] [-] throw0101a|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] deodorel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dijonman2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hutrdvnj|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] quotehelp9128|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pooper|4 years ago|reply
If Germany decides to engage, it will most likely be in consultation with the US, right?
[+] [-] vimacs2|4 years ago|reply
1. I made it up.