HPE and Danfoss put excess data center heat to use

Data centers are hot, in more ways than one. Not only are enterprises and hyperscalers building or expanding their facilities to accommodate increasing interest in artificial intelligence, but that same AI is gobbling power, and thus creating heat — a lot of it. And that means cooling costs are also growing.

In fact, according to the International Energy Agency, by 2026 the AI industry is expected to have grown exponentially to consume at least ten times its electricity demand in 2023.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Danish engineering company Danfoss have announced a partnership to help mitigate the issues: an off-the-shelf heat recovery module branded HPE IT Sustainability Services – Data Center Heat Recovery.

It includes HPE’s scalable Modular Data Center, a small footprint, high-density container with direct liquid cooling, that, HPE said, can be deployed nearly anywhere and can reduce overall energy consumption by 20%.

Danfoss’s contribution consists of heat reuse modules that capture excess heat from the data center modules to provide renewable heating to onsite or neighboring buildings and industries for various applications, and Turbocor oil-free compressors that, Danfoss said, enhance data center cooling efficiency by up to 30%.

It was inspired by Danfoss’ heat reuse at its headquarters in Denmark, where it warms surrounding buildings using heat recovered from its onsite data center.

Megawatts to negawatts

“The benefits are immediate, since the heat power that has been captured from the data center won’t have to be produced to heat the alternate usage,” noted  Pascal Lecoq, worldwide director, sustainable data center modernization at HPE, in a blog post. “The energy that is saved is referred to as ‘negawatt’, because the electricity for this usage has not had to be produced for these purposes.”

Jeremy Roberts, senior workshop director at Info-Tech Research Group, sees potentially significant benefits in the technology. “I’ve seen numbers up to 40% of the total power consumption of a data center going to cooling. Given the massive amount of power data centers suck up, a 30% saving would be an excellent climate benefit,” said Roberts, the author of Info-Tech’s 2020 Infrastructure Priorities Report.

The technology is not a good fit for everyone, though. “There are obvious limitations here — if you don’t need to heat surrounding buildings because you’re in Arizona, for example, this will be less useful to you — but in practice, the idea of being more mindful of the waste produced as part of a technology push is a broadly good thing,” he said.

“I love the idea of making use of excess heat generated from data center cooling,” Roberts continued. “Any capture is good. Think of this less like a revolutionary new source of energy and more like regenerative braking in an electric car.”

But, he added, “A final thought — depending on cost, it might be difficult to get business leaders to care. If they see real savings, great. They will likely move forward. But, absent obvious cost benefits, sustainability is sometimes relegated to the sidelines, unfortunately.” 

HPE IT Sustainability Services – Data Center Heat Recovery is available to order now.