Waste heat recovery from urban data centres and reuse to increase energy efficiency of district heating and cooling network

In order to support the decarbonisation of the heating and cooling sector in Europe, the objective of the Heat RoadMap Europe is to enhance the share of thermal energy provided by District Heating and Cooling (DHC) networks, from the current 13% up to 50% by 2050. Heat recovery and reuse from distributed heat sources is a key point to achieve this goal. Data centre are facilities which could be potentially used to provide excess heat to its surroundings, in particular in urban areas through DHC networks. The thesis is focused in modelling different data centre cooling technologies using the software TRNSYS in order to evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of the interaction between data centre industry and DHC. Coupling the two facilities does not lead to technical issues although hydraulic integration has to be considered when implementing real systems. The common data centre energy efficiency indicator, the power usage effectiveness PUE, should be integrated with another energy indicator, the energy reuse factor (ERF), when heat recovery solution is implemented. Regarding the economic side of the investments, considering actual energy prices, in Spain it seems in general not recommended investing in them. Future incentives might give the opportunity to make feasible the realization of these systems also in Southern Europe