Apple data center to heat Danish community

Apple’s new data center in Jutland, Denmark is set to distribute its heat into the local district heating network.

Data centers tend require a lot of power for their operations, and electricity requirements go up as computing moves into the cloud. As servers become busier, the processing requirements go up. As a result, more heat is generated.

The data center will be partly powered by recycling waste products from farms. Apple is working with Aarhus University on a system that passes agricultural waste through a digester to generate methane, which is then used to power the data center.

The digester reaction turns some of the waste into nutrient-rich fertilizer, which Apple returns to local farmers to use on their fields. It’s a “mutually beneficial relationship,” Apple said in its environment report for 2016, released this week.

The data center in Denmark will be fully powered by renewable energy and won’t put stress on the local grid, PC World reported.

All of Apple’s data centers are operated on renewable energy, and that’s a goal Apple is chasing for all its facilities. About 96 percent of Apple’s facilities worldwide are now run on renewable energy, the company said.

Source: Decentralized Energy
Apple data center to heat Danish community