Putting Your Excess Data Center Heat to Use

RJ Tee
January 26, 2016

putting-your-excess-data-center-heat-to-use - https://cdn.buttercms.com/EFF2CxSbQkeGHJn8KMBq

Your servers generate a ton of heat over the course of a single day. So, why not take this excess heat and pump it back into your office building during cold winter months? It’s a great way to save money and reduce waste at the same time. 

Think about it: A typical server running at 400 watts will generate almost 1,400 British thermal unit (Btu) per hour. A standard 20-by-20 room with a 10-foot ceiling only needs about 35,000 Btu per hour to maintain a 72 degree temperature. Since a large enterprise will run several thousand servers at a given time, it will generate more than enough energy to keep an entire building heated for an extended duration.

In fact, as Amazon is proving, it could be enough energy to heat a whole skyscraper.

Amazon is in the process of constructing a system that will take waste heat from one of its data centers and transfer it to the company’s nearby high-rise office building. The project is expected to save Amazon about three-quarters of the electricity that it would have otherwise had to purchase to heat the facility. Additionally, by removing the heat from its main data center, Amazon will reduce the amount of water and air needed to keep its infrastructure cool.

If you’re thinking of implementing this strategy in your facility, don’t move forward without a reliable environmental monitoring solution that will give you real-time information about the temperature in your data center. After all, when transferring large amounts of heat, it’s critical that you maintain a close watch on your equipment to ensure safe temperature levels. 

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