Stockholm warms to the idea of district heating from new data centre

Stockholm warms to the idea of district heating from new data centre

Håkan Björklund Conapto.jpg

The city of Stockholm’s energy company is working with Swedish data centre company Conapto to build a new 20MW operation.

The new data centre – which will add to two climate-neutral data centres Conapto already has in the city – will have 4,000 sq metres in its first phase, on two floors.

Håkan Björklund (pictured), CEO of Conapto, said: “With this expansion, we can offer one of the largest data centre campuses on the south side [of Stockholm] with a total capacity of 24MW and 10,000 sq metres of data centre space.”

He said the company will focus on “100% renewable energy” as well as “heat recovery to [the] district heating network”.

Phase one of the project indicates a target for customer occupancy from 4 October 2023.

Conapto’s partner in the project is Stockholm Exergi, the energy company in Stockholm owned by the city of Stockholm and Ankhiale, a renewable energy company.

Peter Sivengård, head of open district heating and Stockholm data parks at Stockholm Exergi, said: “We are constantly looking for new opportunities to improve the energy efficiency of Stockholm. In this search, heat recovery is one of the most powerful tools. I am very happy that we together with Conapto are planning to expand our cooperation regarding heat recovery so that it also includes the new data centre.”

Another partner in the project is real estate company Fastpartner, whose CEO Sven-Olof Johansson said: “The real estate industry has for many years worked with sustainability issues, but here we can concretely be involved and add something as we with heat recovery will be able to heat about 8,000 homes in the area. This, in addition to the fact that the data centre industry is growing strongly, makes this one of our most exciting projects.”

Sivengård added: “Stockholm Exergi’s investment in expanded heat recovery has already contributed to Stockholm’s last coal-fired boiler being able to be shut down in 2020.”

He added: “Increased digitization gives the city’s residents new opportunities while the heat from the data centres is taken care of and contributes to a more sustainable energy system. You can say that the electricity is used twice – first in the servers, then for heating. We will need more such examples in the future so that the energy will be enough when more and more parts of society are electrified.”

 

 


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