Læsetid, 2 min.

Excess heat from one of Microsoft’s datacenters will soon be used to heat local households in Høje-Taastrup through a collaboration between Microsoft and the district heating company VEKS and Høje Taastrup Fjernvarme. The datacenter is expected to generate enough surplus heat to meet the annual need of around 6,000 local homes.

VEKS is responsible for the production, transmission, and distribution of district heating in and around Copenhagen. VEKS has already extensive experience in using excess heat from industrial facilities and large buildings to support the local heating supply.

Steen Christiansen, Chair of VEKS, highlights the importance of the agreement for the future of district heating:

“There is significant potential in utilizing surplus heat from datacenters in Greater Copenhagen. This agreement is a concrete contribution to VEKS’ ambition to deliver even more environmentally friendly and sustainable district heating in the years ahead,” he says.

Mikael Mikkelsen, Datacenter Commercial Lead at Microsoft Denmark, says: “Our datacenters are intended to be among the most sustainable in the world. We have made substantial investments in energy efficiency as part of establishing our new datacenters in Denmark. The agreement with VEKS is an important step toward building a more climate-conscious Danish datacenter region, where surplus heat benefits both local residents and the environment.”

Inside an industrial facility with large pipes and machinery, a technician stands between equipment rows.

The excess heat is captured inside the datacenter using an air-to-liquid heat exchanger and then transferred as heated water through a pipe system to the local district heating network. VEKS has installed heat pumps to raise the temperature further, after which the heat will be distributed through heat exchangers and underground pipes to homes and businesses in the area connected to the district heating system. It is expected that surplus heat from the datacenter will cover the annual heating needs of approximately 6,000 households in Høje-Taastrup.

The project is one of the first in which Microsoft is integrating waste heat recovery technology directly into its datacenters. This is possible because the facility is located close to both the existing infrastructure for utilizing surplus heat and a nearby residential area in Høje-Taastrup.

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