‘Building M’, as the facility is known, adds 4.5 MW of capacity to the Frankfurt campus and was opened in October.
Frankfurt is Europe’s largest network node, and the most important location for data centres in Germany. Demand for space at the important interchange has led to Building M being fully leased in just two months.
Telehouse said that further expansion was planned for the facility. The building already adds 2,200 square meters of data centre space across three floors to the campus. The full campus now clocks in at over 50,000 square meters.
Telehouse have been expanding their European presence recently, adding a new $250 million data centre to their Paris Magny Campus in October.
The waste heat generated by all buildings on the Frankfurt campus will be used to supply a new and nearby residential quarter with district heating.
Telehouse said this heat recovery process can provide more than 60% of the annual energy requirement for heating homes and water in the community, using around 2 per cent of the waste heat from the Telehouse data centres.
The additional demand is fed into the district heating network from the combined heat and power plant of the Frankfurt-based utility company Manova.
At around 400 tonnes of CO2, the emission savings are approximately 50% compared to conventional local gas-based heating.
"It’s particularly important for us to be able to combine efficiency, performance and safety with a contribution to environmental protection in the interest of our customers," said Dr. Béla Waldhauser, managing director of Telehouse Deutschland.
"In this way, we are assuming responsibility both locally and globally".
Telehouse is exploring similar opportunities in the UK and is already reusing heat at its Magny-Les-Hameaux campus in Paris.
Capacity reported in November that the UK had announced funding for the first project that would see thousands of homes near to data centres heated by waste energy.
Other countries in Europe, including Sweden and the Netherlands have also implemented similar projects.
