Thanks to waste heat from the Nikhef Data Center, 720 student residences in Amsterdam will become gas-free. The facility, which is fundamental research in the field of subatomic physics, is already warming 800 homes in the Science Park II complex. The project is expected to be completed within a year and is part-funded by the municipality of Amsterdam.
Excess heat will be stored in the ground
Student housing agency DUWO is planning to use the heat generated by the data center to warm the residences at the Science Park I campus during the autumn and the winter. During the summer, some of the excess heat generated will be stored in the ground. With this process, more residence will be gas-free thanks to the environmentally friendly data center.
Nikhef data center includes the research institute, which is a research partner of CERN and one of the 12 data centers from the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX). Nikhef is also home to more than 140 parties including internet exchanges, telecom operators, carriers, internet service providers and DNS servers.