Sweden-based Bahnhof AB, an Internet service provider, is taking advantage of the climate and population density in Stockholm to turn ventilated data center heat into usable energy.
Bahnhof CEO John Karlung recently showed RCR Wireless News around its data center in Sweden’s capital and explained the novel process.
“The normal business idea for a data center,” Karlung said, “is to either use active cooling [or] the other alternative is what you call free cooling, which is based on the idea that it’s cold outside so you use the cold outside air to cool the facility. This is something different.”
Essentially, heat produced by Bahnhof’s data center is ventilated then captured by the municipal power utility and provided to rate-payers to heat their apartments.
“What do you do with all this excessive heat?” Karlung asked. “The answer is quite simple. You ventilate out the apartments. This is the real model to work together with the utility company.”
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Karlung said the company is designing another data center based on the existing concept; Bahnhof is also investigating the scalability of the model for potential deployment at much larger data centers.
But location is key.
“In order to get this model to work, you have to have a densely populated area in a cold climate,” he said. “All the energy we put in is used by the servers, yes, but on top of that, we get energy back. It’s kind of a new concept.”
For more videos focused on Bahnhof’s data center operations, visit the RCR Wireless News YouTube channel here.