Data Center Nikhef in the Netherlands Heats 720 Student Residences

Student housing agency DUWO will be able to heat another 720 student residences at the Amsterdam Science Park in the Netherlands, using heat from the Nikhef data center in Amsterdam. In addition, heat from servers will be stored in the ground in summer and used in the student homes in autumn and winter.

Since 2013, part of the heat from the Nikhef data center has already been used to heat almost 800 homes in the ‘Science Park II’ complex. In the coming year, the homes of the Science Park I complex will also be connected, allowing another 720 student student residences to be heated by the Nikhef facility.

DUWO receives a subsidy for the project from the municipality of Amsterdam. The purchase would also be interesting for Nikhef, because cooling water from the soil is used to dissipate the heat, so that the equipment is kept at the right temperature.

CERN

As a colocation data center, the Nikhef data center provides a home to ICT-equipment from third parties and is one of the nodes in the European computer network of the CERN particle lab in Geneva. Data from the measurements with the accelerators are stored at CERN, so that researchers can then analyze them.

The heating provided by the Nikhef data center means that the student flats no longer need to use natural gas for their heating.

Nikhef data center inside