Heating of houses by data centers

2017: Data center of Apple

In April, 2017 the American producer of consumer electronics Apple announced construction of data center from which heat will heat houses. Such DPC will appear in Denmark (more precisely, on the peninsula Jutland belonging to the country) and will eat from renewable energy sources.

The energy developed by a new data processing center will be redirected to the central heating system of the region and to be used for warming of premises.

Data center of Apple

A power supply of DPC will be organized using exclusively renewable energy sources, including processing of agricultural waste. Apple together with Aarhus University (Aarhus University) develop the system allowing to receive when processing methane for further application in gas driven generators. A part of waste will be processed on fertilizers for farmer fields.

Apple also builds data center in Ireland which will eat energy of ocean waves. The company supported the program for sustainable development of power advanced by the local government for the purpose of development of a new power source.

Both new DPCs of Apple — in Denmark and Ireland — it is going to construct in 2017. Total investments into projects are estimated at $1.8 billion.

Selection of a surplus heat from servers — the usual phenomenon in data centers. It not only costs much to the companies (cooling of servers requires a lot of electricity), but also leaves a big carbon mark in the atmosphere. It is considered that modern data centers consume as much energy, how many the industry of air transportation.

Apple is known for the care of ecology. All data centers of the company eat from renewable sources. Besides, such energy is received by 96% of objects of the company (data for April, 2017), including the new headquarters of vendor in Cupertino.^[1]

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