ReUseHeat – excess heat recovery from the data center | Braunschweig, Germany
Veolia is expanding its activities in the energy sector in order to stay at the vanguard of the transition to renewables. Veolia’s subsidiary BS|ENERGY operates a city-wide district heating network powered by cogeneration plants. The company has been closely cooperating with local property developers to offer forward-looking energy solutions. A new residential development on the outskirts of Braunschweig will make use of waste heat from a new data center. Data centers produce large quantities of heat and require significant cooling. The heat that is recovered from the data center will be fed into an innovative, low-temperature district heating network, instead of being discharged into the ambient air. Before the recovered heat is injected into the network, its temperature will be raised by the heat pump from 25°C to 70°C. After having been utilized for space heating and domestic hot water production, the cooled water will then be returned to the heat pump to collect heat from data center once again. The system is designed to meet the base-load heat demand. The new residential development, which features 600 units, is also connected to the existing high-temperature district heating network through a heat exchanger. This innovative pairing will augment the efficiency of the heat pump while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This demonstration project is part of the ReUseHeat – EU H2020 program, which aims to identify ways to productively harvest the energy generated by people living and working in cities. Therefore, the project designs and demonstrates four system innovations for recovering urban waste heat. The four-year project, which was initiated by BS|ENERGY in October 2017, will be the first of the demonstration sites to go live.
