European data center firm OVHcloud has secured approval from the municipal government of Lille, France, to hook up one of its data centers to the city’s district heating network.
The European Metropolis of Lille unanimously approved the initiative, which will see OVH connect its Roubaix data center portfolio to the network. According to the company, the process took ten years of study, and the project is now entering its operational phase.
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OVH operates eight data center facilities in Roubaix across one large-scale data center campus, with capacities ranging from 8MW to 12MW. The data centers utilize water cooling systems, which the company claims will allow for more efficient heat transfer into the local heating network.
The heating network is operated by R Énergies and covers approximately 31km (19.2 miles) of interconnected underground pipes. The network has 105MW of thermal capacity, allowing it to deliver around 117GWh of heat annually across 205 delivery points. According to the company, it boasts a renewable and recovered energy rate of 77.2 percent.
OVH has committed to building its data center infrastructure with a heat-reuse design philosophy. The company claims to utilize predictive AI and passive hydraulic innovations to dynamically balance water flow based on server workloads, allowing it to deliver a stable, predictable stream of thermal energy for local municipal grids.
The company joins a growing list of European data center developers in selling heat to district heating networks. Colo provider Equinix has signed several heat reuse deals, most recently with energy operator A2A to recover heat produced by its data centers and integrate it into the district heating network of Milan, in northern Italy.
In Stockholm, Sweden, each facility in the urban data center campus Stockholm Data Parks is connected to the city’s district heating network. Near Helsinki, in Finland, Microsoft is building a data center region which it says will be “the world’s largest scheme to recycle waste heat from data centers.”
Germany has implemented a new law requiring data centers to make their waste heat available to local heating networks.
Read the orginal article: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-wins-approval-to-connect-data-centers-in-roubaix-france-to-local-district-heating-network/
