Polish data center plans to send its waste heat to the neighbors
As Europe swelters in a heatwave, residents probably donβt want to hear about ways to make their homes even hotter, but thatβs what Polish property developer Citylink is talking about, with plans to dump waste heat from a new data center in WrocΕaw into the municipal district heating network.
Citylink is designing the data center so that heat from servers can be recovered instead of being dissipated via cooling systems β and as the data center grows, any increase in computing power will mean more energy available for recovery.
The collaboration with local power company Kogeneracja will provide βvaluable experience in designing and operating modern data centers, with a particular focus on infrastructure dedicated to AI nodes,β said MichaΕ Starybrat, development director at Citylink.
βThe dynamic growth of the artificial intelligence and cloud technology markets generates unprecedented demand for computing power, this collaboration demonstrates how modern digital infrastructure can actively contribute to building the energy ecosystem of the future,β he added.
This type of initiative is not new. There have been similar projects in the UK and in New Zealand, but with warnings that data centers are contributing to the warming of the planet, there may well be a lot more organizations looking to deploy that excess heat more fruitfully in the future.
However, announcing it during a heatwave may not be the most politically sensitive approach to take.
This article first appeared on Network World.
