Heat exchange

Even as data centers try ways to reduce power consumption, some others are looking at ways to capture the vast amount of heat that a massive IT data centre kicks out. Like telecommunications company Telehouse Europe which plans to capture the heat and pipe it to nearby homes and businesses.

When it opens in 2010, the nine-storey £80 million Telehouse West data centre in London’s Docklands will provide up to 9MW of ‘free heat’ – enough for water and space heating in about 450 local homes.

Telehouse intends to install a heat exchange unit to pump water, warmed by the data centre’s cooling systems, to the perimeter of the site, from where a developer can pipe it on to their own site and use a heat exchanger to warm or cool buildings.

If the waste heat is used to the full, it should result in an overall annual saving of 1,110 tonnes of CO2 emissions in the UK alone.

It is time for innovative thinking. Every conversion of energy possible has to be studied so that what is being wasted can be used. As we have shown here with examples from the world over – footsteps harnessed to energy, tidal power into electrical, etc.

Can you think of an innovative idea to capture energy? Let us know and you could win $10,000.