Breakthrough In Green Energy For Data Centres From Climeon & Aligned Energy

A fully-integrated green platform that can power next-generation, ultra-efficient data centres in the U.S. and globally with 100% clean electricity using low temperature waste heat has been developed by U.S-based Aligned Energy thanks to a 4-year partnership with Climeon.

More than 50% of the world’s energy is exhausted to the environment as low-grade heat, effectively making waste heat a largely available but unused resource.

Climeon Ocean™ takes hot water between 70 and 120 degrees Celsius and converts it to 100% clean electricity. This optimized process is a competitive alternative to traditional electricity sources. According to World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), Climeon’s technology has a large potential to reduce the CO2 impact globally which resulted in the company receiving the “Climate Solver” award earlier this year.

“To meet the challenges of climate change, the world needs new clean energy sources,” says Climeon CEO Thomas Öström. “The Climeon system is just that, producing 100% clean energy and a new baseload for electricity.”

“We have entered a new era of innovation in how we power and cool data centres, one of the fastest-growing users of energy and water in today’s digital economy,” said Jakob Carnemark. “In most cases if you want to use clean electricity, converting solar and wind power are the typical methods; however, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. By cultivating this largely untapped resource in waste heat and converting it to 100% stable green baseload power, and by being able to use low temperature geothermal sources, we can support the data centre industry’s rising demand for green energy in ways not previously possible through this new, highly sustainable and reliable approach.”

We have entered a new era of innovation in how we power and cool data centres, one of the fastest-growing users of energy and water in today’s digital economy.

 

Earlier this year, Aligned Energy was recognised with a 2016 Edison Award for pushing the envelope in technological energy advancements through its highly-optimised data centre heat removal cycle (or Cactus Cooler™ system) that allows their data centres to cool themselves using up to 85% less water and 80% less energy while also guaranteeing an industry-low average of 1.15 PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness).

Aligned Energy will leverage its award-winning heat removal cycle as well as deploy Climeon’s groundbreaking Heat Power technology, which performs at twice the efficiency as the best organic Rankine cycles at significantly lower temperature heat sources, in its data centres.

Last autumn, Aligned Energy opened the industry’s first “pay-for-use” ultra-efficient, next-generation data centre in Plano, Texas just outside Dallas, a 30-megawatt (MW) complex that offers consumption-based utility pricing for on-demand data centre capacity for large cloud and enterprise clients requiring greater control of their data centre cost and faster time-to-market.

With their second data centre in Phoenix, a 51 000 square meter, 62MW campus, scheduled to come online in early 2017, Aligned Energy has charted a course to reach the 100% green carbon neutral data centre by tackling the industry’s well-documented power, cooling and water consumption issues while dramatically lowering operating costs.

The partnership includes an initial planned delivery of eight Climeon Ocean™ modules with a capacity of 1 MW.