Data Center Waste Heat Recovery System DataHeat Deployed in Stockholm: Server Waste Heat Warms 20,000 Households

Data Center Waste Heat Recovery System DataHeat Deployed in Stockholm

On March 8, 2029, Swedish infrastructure operator Stokab and data center company Equinix jointly announced that the DataHeat waste heat recovery project has officially entered operation in Stockholm. The project feeds waste heat from Equinix's Stockholm data center into the city's district heating network via heat exchangers, providing winter heating for approximately 20,000 apartments.

Data centers are notoriously power-hungry, with about 95% of consumed electricity ultimately converting to heat. The traditional approach is to use cooling systems to dump this heat into the atmosphere — essentially paying to heat up while paying to cool down. DataHeat's approach recovers and reuses the waste heat.

Equinix Nordic Director Samuel Er said: "Our data center generates approximately 35GWh of waste heat annually. Through the DataHeat system, this heat is elevated to temperatures suitable for district heating (about 65 degrees Celsius) and pumped into Stokab's district heating network." DataHeat's heat pump system achieves a coefficient of performance (COP) of 3.5, meaning each kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed recovers 3.5 kilowatt-hours of waste heat.

Stockholm Energy CEO Anders Egelrud said: "By 2030, Stockholm plans to incorporate data center waste heat as one of the city's primary heating sources, targeting coverage for 100,000 households. DataHeat is the first commercial project in this plan."

However, data center waste heat heating has a fundamental limitation — summer. When outdoor temperatures are elevated, the city doesn't need heating, and waste heat can only be dumped into the atmosphere again. Egelrud indicated they are researching the possibility of using waste heat for district cooling systems and industrial heating to achieve year-round utilization.