Scan Life Posted on 2025-01-30 11:45:00

Geneva will be heated with recycled energy from this revolutionary Swiss data center!

From Edel Strazimiri

Geneva will be heated with recycled energy from this revolutionary Swiss data

A Swiss data center inaugurated this week will use recycled energy to generate heat for homes in the area. Geneva-based Infomaniak has recovered 100 percent of the electricity it uses by November 2024.

The recycled energy will be able to supply the centralized heating network in the Canton of Geneva and benefit around 6,000 households.

The center is currently operating at 25 percent of its potential capacity. It aims to reach full capacity by 2028.

The data center hopes to demonstrate a greener way of operating in the heavy-duty cloud power industry.

"In the real world, data centers convert electrical energy into heat. With the exponential growth of the cloud, this energy is currently being released into the atmosphere and wasted," said Boris Siegenthaler, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Infomaniak.

"There is an urgent need to improve this way of doing things, to connect these infrastructures to heating networks and to adapt construction standards."

Infomaniak has received several awards for the energy efficiency of its complexes, which operate without air conditioning, a rarity for hot data centers.

The company also builds infrastructure underground so as not to have an impact on the environment.

At Infomaniak, all the electrical energy that powers equipment such as servers, inverters, and ventilation is converted into heat at a temperature of 40 to 45C.

This is then channeled into an air/water exchanger which filters it into a hot water circuit. Heat pumps are used to raise its temperature to 67C in summer and 85C in winter.

How many homes will be heated by the data center?

When the center is operating at full capacity, it will supply Geneva's heating network with 1.7 megawatts, the amount needed for 6,000 households per year or for 20,000 people to take a 5-minute shower every day.

This means that the Canton of Geneva could save 3,600 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2eq) of natural gas each year, or 5,500 tCO2eq of pellets per year.

The system deployed in Infomaniak's data center is free for other companies to replicate. There is a technical guide available explaining how to replicate the model and a brief for policymakers advising on how to improve data center design regulations and sustainability.

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