International. Telecommunications company Ericsson operates a data center in Kirkkonummi, southern Finland. The facility currently generates between 10,000 and 15,000 MWh of waste heat annually and is expected to nearly double in 2017 and 2018.
To recover this waste heat, Ericsson signed an agreement in November 2016 with the energy company Fortum to use the waste heat for district heating. Waste heat from Ericsson's data center covers about 20% of the annual heat demand of the Kirkkonummi heat network, enough to meet the annual heating needs of approximately 1,000 single-family homes, thanks to a large heating network (more than 800 km of pipes).
Fortum will invest in two heat pumps used as the primary cooling method. They will use R1234ze, a refrigerant with a very low GWP (<1), which was developed to replace R-134a, which has a much greater impact on climate change should it be released into the atmosphere.
Fortum has previously used waste heat for the Espoo, Kauniainen and Kirkkonummi areas of Finland, including waste heat from wastewater at the Suomenoja heat pumping plant and excess heat from the Matinkylä Metropolitan Centre and Espoo Hospital.
Recognized as Finland's largest data center, the Sonera facility is expected to produce enough heat to cover about 10 percent of the district's heat demand in the Espoo area, which is Finland's second-largest city and has about 270,000 residents.
