Tens of millions of dollars have been allocated for this
The UK government has committed around $44.5 million to improve West London’s central heating system. According to Datacenter Dynamics, this system will use the heat generated by data centers to heat up to 10 thousand homes. There was a scandal last year when it emerged that construction of new housing projects in the area had been halted because data centers had taken up all the available capacity at local substations.
The Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF) of the country’s Ministry of Energy plans to use the funds to develop a system capable of using heat from data centers with a coolant temperature of +20 to +35 ° C. The project will be implemented by the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC), which is working on the development of the western region of the capital. Aecom will develop the heating network.
Data centers in London will heat thousands of homes
OPDC confirmed that active negotiations are currently underway with two data center campuses capable of collectively generating 98.7 GWh of heat. In this area of London, Virtus, Ark Data Centres, Microsoft and Vantage have their own data center development projects, and all of them are at various stages of implementation. This project covers more than 9 thousand homes and 250 thousand square meters of commercial real estate. As part of the municipal Local Energy Accelerator (LEA) program, the project will also receive $495 thousand for technical consultations.
The project organizers claim that the data centers provide a constant supply of “low-grade” heat that would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere. This heat will now be transferred through a network of plastic pipes to energy distribution centers, where heat pumps will raise the temperature of the water. This water will be supplied through regular steel pipes to new and existing homes. This project is the first of five green initiatives for which the GHNF intends to allocate a total of approximately $80 million.
