KI Lighthouse Waste heat recovery from data centers

Data Centre Heat Exchange with AI-Technologies (DC2HEAT)

The DC2HEAT project is intended to realize an AI lighthouse for the use of waste heat from data centers, using Frankfurt as an example. DC2HEAT is thus intended to help ensure that the dynamically growing data center infrastructure can be operated in a climate-friendly manner. This is to avoid the use of fossil fuels for heat supply in Frankfurt and other regions in the future.

As the power consumption of data centers increases, more and more waste heat is also generated. In the urban area of Frankfurt am Main alone, the electricity consumption of the large data centers rose by almost 130 percent between 2017 and 2022 to nearly 2.4 billion kilowatt hours. This amount of energy would be enough to supply heat to about 100,000 homes. However, many technical, organizational and economic obstacles exist that need to be overcome.

Simplifying climate-friendly waste heat recovery with AI

The main objective of the project is to use artificial intelligence to simplify the planning, adaptation and operation of plants and trades for waste heat recovery from data centers. In addition, operation is to be made more economical and at the same time more environmentally friendly. In this way, the diffusion of this type of waste heat utilization can be promoted and new utilization possibilities for waste heat can be developed.

Within the project DC2HEAT, Borderstep will in particular analyze and evaluate the sustainability potentials of the use of AI in the project and support the transfer of the results into practice.

Consortium partners of the project are Paderborn University, the consulting and planning company AS Enterprise Engineering and the AI agency Unetiq. The project is also supported by a broad circle of associated partners and supporters.

To be mentioned here in particular are:

the City of Frankfurt,
the initiative Digital Hessen,
the eco – Association of the Internet Industry,
the Energy supplier Mainova and
a large number of companies in the data center industry.

The research project DC2HEAT (funding code: 67KI32008A) is funded by the BMUV in the program KI-Lighthouses for Environment, Climate, Nature and Resources. The responsible project executing agency for the funding program is Zukunft, Umwelt, Gesellschaft (ZUG) GmbH.