A new data centre in Manchester will be developed with heat re-use capabilities, harnessing waste heat for conditioning, reuse and delivery to local projects.
Teledata – which was acquired by the telecommunications service provider Datum Datacentres in 2022 – announced the new data centre, dubbed MCR2, on Wednesday 24 January, confirming that the local projects benefiting from the waste heat will be in the Wythenshawe area.
According to Teledata, the system will see heat exchangers used to transfer heat –”the thermal load” – of the data centre cooling look to the local community via a heat pump system. Removing this heat will also reduce the amount of electricity required to cool the data centre itself.
Alongside this, MCR2 facility will be powered by renewable sources with green certificates as well as solar photovoltaic (PV) roof panels, which are set to generate more than 83,000kWh per annum.
An existing building will be demolished to build what Teledata called the “newer, more modern, energy efficient facility,” next to the company’s existing data centre.
“We have worked hard to ensure that sustainability principles are embedded at every stage of the development of our MCR2 facility,” said Matt Edgley, chief operating officer at Teledata.
“As a data centre provider, we have a responsibility to our clients to ensure that continuous capacity is available and is delivered sustainably, supporting clients as they strive to meet their environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) targets. We hope to be able to expand fast enough to meet demand in the Manchester region, so that we can support our clients’ growth through resilient, secure and dependable data centre services and hosting solutions.”
Reducing the climate impact of data centres
Data centres can scrutiny for their significant energy demand, leading to severe measures to minimise their energy impact. The Dutch government has set limitations on the construction of new ‘hyperscale’ data centres, as well as enforcing a temporary outright ban on new projects of this size for nine months in 2022.
To help mitigate the energy-intensive nature of these facilities, projects, such as Teledata’s, have sought to re-use the heat produced by the data centres.
Deep Green boosts a similar technology, transferring heat from inert oils surrounding the data centre, via a heat exchanger. The tech start-up recently received a £200 million investment from Octopus Energy.
