Waste heat reutilisation from data centres

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcome:

• Make sustainable seasonal storage solutions available to data centres to allow year-round optimised operation in urban environments in an integrated way to supply heat to neighbouring district heating system(s), agriculture and/or industry optimising use of excess heating energy and required cooling energy.

Storage solutions with high round-trip efficiency, low dependence on critical raw materials, low land/space footprint will be considered as advantage.

Scope:

Two main obstacles arise in relation to the reuse of waste heat from data centres:

• First, data centres produce more waste heat in summer/when it is hot outside. The PUE (Power use effectiveness) of data centres vary considerably along the year, because in winter they can resort to free cooling (using fresh air from the outside), while in summer they need to ventilate more and use heat pumps to cool down the outside air. As a result, an important part of data centres’ waste heat is produced when less people need it (at least for domestic heating purposes).
• Second, the heat produced is of poor quality (low temperatures and often light heat vector), so that even for immediate use it is often not economically viable to use heat pumps to “concentrate” it (increase temperature and, if necessary, communicate it to a heavier vector).

Combining waste heat reuse with heat storage would allow data centres to better valorise their waste heat in winter (under the form of residential heating for instance) while storing this heat during hotter periods. From an economic perspective, the increase of waste heat that can be valorised and sold by the data centre during the appropriate seasons may partially compensate the additional costs of cooling during summer months. Such technologies may subsequently apply to other industries generating important amounts of low temperature – low density heat.

Selected projects will test and further develop seasonal heat storage technologies through an integrated pilot that includes at least the following technologies:

• Heating and cooling exchange system for the data centre and the district heating system.
• Seasonal energy storage.

For efficiency purposes, the storage technology should be able to store the heat for a long time (up to 6 months), with as little energy losses as possible, and using as few compressor steps as possible. The storage technology should also be non-hazardous and be deployable close to dwelling areas without posing a threat to them. Additionally, a specific consideration should be given to the cyber-physical security of the combined storage and restitution system.

Optionally, the project could involve heat pump manufacturers to explore the benefits of heat pump technologies to the overall heat storage facility.

Plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results for proposals submitted under this topic should include a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination. The exploitation plans should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan, financial model) indicating the possible funding sources to be potentially used (in particular the Innovation Fund).