News Waste Heat From Microsoft Servers to Warm Residents in Southern Finland

[Admin]

Microsoft is building an emission-free data center in southern Finland. It is working with the Fortum energy company to address 40% of the heating needs of 250,000 customers in the region.

Waste Heat From Microsoft Servers to Warm Residents in Southern Finland : Read more

 

[pixelpusher220]

11,000 workers for a single data center (and services)? no idea but that seems like a pretty high number or perhaps a very big data center?

 

[King_V]

My exasperated response is "Why the hell isn't this kind of thing done more commonly?"

 

[pixelpusher220]

My exasperated response is "Why the hell isn't this kind of thing done more commonly?"

Only going to work with large apartment/condo type facilities I think. And maybe even new construction only. Retrofitting existing dwellings would seem cost prohibitive.

That said, I've seen old eastern bloc cities that had central steam heat for the entire city center. Even think Chicago might have something like that in the sky scrapers.

 

[Co BIY]

In Scandinavia steam heat is a more common utility available to large areas because the heat demand is large and is for much more of the year. "Finland has over 15,000 kilometers of district heating pipelines."

Finland is also a leader in Nuclear power bringing a new plant on this year with plans to get to 60% of their power from Nuclear. That allows for a very favorable CO2 scoring for this datacenter. In fact you can probably double count the CO2 savings (once on production and second on reuse. ).


Finland is innovative in the incentives space as well.
"The new law further enhances Finland's tax-friendly business environment, offering companies a 150% tax deduction for joint R&D projects during 2021-2025. This means that companies get an additional tax deduction of 50% (on top of the usual 100% deduction) on the costs of research and innovation projects carried out in collaboration with universities and research institutes."

https://www.businessfinland.fi/en/w...finland-plans-energy-tax-cut-for-data-centers

 

[Exploding PSU]

The fact that you can power computers using electricity that does not come from emissions-producing process is astonishing.
It sounds like fairy tale to me.

 

[pixelpusher220]

The fact that you can power computers using electricity that does not come from emissions-producing process is astonishing.
It sounds like fairy tale to me.

perhaps I'm missing the sarcasm...

Windmills are hundreds if not thousands of years old. Simply attaching wires and magnets produces electricity.

Sunlight can boil water creating steam can drive windmill/turbines.

 

[watzupken]

The fact that you can power computers using electricity that does not come from emissions-producing process is astonishing.
It sounds like fairy tale to me.

I think if you take a step back and think about what “emission free“ means, I think you will be disappointed. Let’s take wind and light as example, since they are commonly used. While it is true that wind and solar are “emission free” at the point of usage, the process of producing and maintaining windmills and solar panels is certainly not emission free. You need lots of power upfront to manufacturer them in factories. The same goes for nuclear power plants. Assuming one day that we really run out of fossil fuels, these supposed “self sustaining” power generating methods may fail to sustain itself. This will be the ultimate test if the claim of “sustainable energy” is indeed true.

 

[Exploding PSU]

perhaps I'm missing the sarcasm...

Windmills are hundreds if not thousands of years old. Simply attaching wires and magnets produces electricity.

Sunlight can boil water creating steam can drive windmill/turbines.

Not a sarcasm, legit I really mean it. Where I live power is supplied by coal-fired power plants, and has been since forever. For my entire life I pretty much always thought electricity = huge smoke and some ash.

Seeing large-scale electricity being generated without any visible emission is so unreal to me.

 

[King_V]

I think if you take a step back and think about what “emission free“ means, I think you will be disappointed. Let’s take wind and light as example, since they are commonly used. While it is true that wind and solar are “emission free” at the point of usage, the process of producing and maintaining windmills and solar panels is certainly not emission free. You need lots of power upfront to manufacturer them in factories. The same goes for nuclear power plants. Assuming one day that we really run out of fossil fuels, these supposed “self sustaining” power generating methods may fail to sustain itself. This will be the ultimate test if the claim of “sustainable energy” is indeed true.

Wait . . I'm unclear on something . . am I reading this wrong, or are you saying that fossil fuels are and always will be required to manufacture and maintain non-fossil-fuel power producing equipment (windmills, solar panels, etc)?

If that's what you're saying, then why?

(If that's not what you're saying, then I very clearly need some caffeine)

 

[Eximo]

There are alternatives to fossil fuels. You can make hydrocarbons from many sources and use those to make petrochemicals and additives.

There might be some argument to be made at how inefficient such processes would be, but they would still be viable.

Solar powered mining equipment to extract raw materials, solar powered arc smelters for refine materials, solar powered CO2 extractors to create simple hydrocarbons, engineered bacteria for more complex hydrocarbons. Which you will need for a lot of chemical reactions to make modern technology. Just need a lot more square area to do the job. Basically instead of using minimal energy to extract and then burn energy that was stored a long time ago by plants.

There is also some concern in absorbing too much solar energy rather then letting it bounce back out. But there are solutions to that if we really had to. Such as large orbital sun shades.