Finland and waste heat
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Liked this. With so many data centers being built that’s a lot of heat.
Finland is emerging as a global leader in sustainable urban heating by repurposing waste heat from data centers to warm residential and commercial buildings.
Several Finnish cities, including Helsinki and Espoo, have integrated this technology into their district heating systems, a network of underground pipes that distribute heat efficiently across neighborhoods.
These systems capture the thermal energy generated by servers during data processing—typically considered waste—and redirect it to heat homes, offices, and other infrastructure.
Some of these data centers are located underground, taking advantage of natural insulation and freeing up surface space.
In Helsinki, for example, a well-known facility beneath the Uspenski Cathedral sends its excess heat into the city's grid, reportedly heating up to 500 large homes. Similarly, global tech giants like Google have developed data centers, such as the one in Hamina, that provide up to 80% of a neighborhood’s annual heating demand through waste heat recovery—offered free to the local utility company.
These systems not only reduce carbon emissions but also lower heating costs and increase energy efficiency.
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The Finns have been actively involved in using waste heat recovery co-generation for heating since the early 1980’s. By the mid 80s they were already world leaders. I remember a taking a Finnish business delegation into the oil sands to look at the feasibility of setting up a similar cogeneration plant for Ft. MacMurray in 1988. The concept was way beyond what the politicians and oil patch here could get their head around. The result is we continued to waste heat energy rather than invest in efficiency until very recently when he regulatory system finally began to catch up with the technologies the likes of the Finns developed now over 40 or more years ago.
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@Klaus must be ecstatic that every time he makes an AI-enhanced Google inquiry, there is a good chance that he's also heating a Fin's tuchus.
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@Klaus must be ecstatic that every time he makes an AI-enhanced Google inquiry, there is a good chance that he's also heating a Fin's tuchus.
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@Klaus must be ecstatic that every time he makes an AI-enhanced Google inquiry, there is a good chance that he's also heating a Fin's tuchus.
@Axtremus said in Finland and waste heat:
@Klaus must be ecstatic that every time he makes an AI-enhanced Google inquiry, there is a good chance that he's also heating a Fin's tuchus.
Please don’t be thinking about Fin’s tuchus.
