Stream a film and use it to heat up a hospital? This unusual idea will soon become reality in Vienna. Because waste heat from the server rooms of the private data center operator Interxion – in which a well-known streaming provider has also housed its devices – will become an important part of the energy supply of the Floridsdorf clinic from 2023. This is intended to cover 50 to 70 percent of the hospital’s heat requirements.
The Cloud is a large complex on Brünner Strasse: Interxion operates what the company says is the largest data center campus in the country on an area formerly used by the Elin company. The dimensions of the system cannot be seen from the outside. But behind the façade of a simple office building, there is a network of corridors and rooms with IT equipment covering thousands of square meters.
Connected to pipeline
Digitization not only requires a complex infrastructure, but also the right temperature. Servers have to be constantly cooled in order not to overheat. This in turn heats the cooling water on the Floridsdorf campus to around 26 degrees. This is where the project implemented together with Wien Energie and the health association comes in. After it has been used, the liquid will in future make its way to the neighbors via a pipeline.
The Floridsdorf clinic is only a few hundred meters away. A heat pump will be installed between the two buildings by 2023, the energy requirements of which will be covered by a wind turbine, among other things. In the system, the thermal energy for heating the hospital is extracted from the water. The cold water flows back into the data center, where it is used once more for cooling.
Cost: 3.5 million euros
The cooperation with the neighboring company should CO2-Enable savings of 4,000 tons per year. The investments were estimated at 3.5 million euros, with a financial subsidy from federal environmental funding. The project was presented on Monday by Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens), City Councilor for Economic Affairs Peter Hanke, City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker (both SPÖ) and representatives of the project partners.
Gewessler pointed out that such concepts would help to ensure that the energy required in Austria might also be produced here. “We use the energy that is already there,” emphasized the department head.
