Is energy efficiency incompatible with our exponential use of the web? No, quite the contrary. The data centers at the heart of the network have every interest in optimizing their operation. Like the cloud service provider Infomaniak, which is trying to change the situation. Their teams are investing significant resources into new generation data centers. Numerama went to visit that of the Bistoquette cooperative, near Geneva.
Deleting your emails, closing your apps in the background or resizing your images before sending them has a relatively minimal impact on the environment. But it would be wrong to say that our digital uses are not neutral: like many human activities, they consume electricity in particular. And, on this point, there is still a lot of progress to be made to make this industry less energy-intensive.
The Swiss company Infomaniak recently embarked on a major project: building a data center which fully reuses the energy consumed for its activities in order to heat no fewer than 6,000 Minergie-A type homes throughout the year.
To understand how such a technological and ecological feat is possible, we braved the cool February morning to go to Geneva (by train, of course). Objective: discover how a data center reuses all of the heat it produces, while integrating harmoniously into a modern and responsible urban space.
Because to meet these constraints, the entire energy supply circuit must be rethought. On the one hand, the first question that arises is that of energy: how to ensure that the electricity that powers the data center is as green as possible? On the other hand, it is heat: how can we revalue the energy consumption converted into waste heat by digital technology, while maintaining the servers at an optimal operating temperature?
Energy, renewable and renewed
The entire Infomaniak project with its new data center not far from Geneva is ultimately based on energy management. It is at the heart of digital infrastructure and the crux of the problem. Making digital uses less carbon-intensive largely comes down to managing electricity consumption.
On the side of the Swiss host, this question is quickly addressed: it is the dams like that of Verbois which supply the datacenter. No coal, no oil in this mix. We just find, in an isolated room of the underground building, several inverters connected to batteries and generators, which make it possible to maintain the service if necessary.
But when we enter the Infomaniak datacenter, we understand with a shiver that the subject will revolve around the temperature. To put it simply, explains Boris Siegenthaler, strategic director and founder of the company, a data center above all needs to be cooled in order to run without problems. Putting on air conditioning is out of the question: it’s an outdated method and a processor, for example, runs very well at around forty degrees Celsius. If it needs to be cooled, it is because it emits heat while operating, like any computer component powered by electricity. In fact, 1W of electricity generates 1W of heat. The data center only converts electrical energy into thermal energy.
We begin to understand where we are being led: the Infomaniak data center under the Bistoquette is in fact a huge ventilated radiator, coupled with a heat pump. From room to room, Boris shows us how the flow of warm air passes through the data center to cool the servers and how the flow of hot air goes the opposite way, thanks to huge fans. This warm air, converted by the heat pump, is only part of the equation. Because it is at this level that Infomaniak engineers have taken a step further than the giants of the sector.
The so-called heat fatal (40 to 45°C), because produced by the activity of Infomaniak servers (hosting data and websites, powering AI, etc.) is not lost. It is thus, initially, brought into a heat pump which will heat the cold return of the district heating network from 55/60°C to 67°C. Secondly, this same pump will generate so-called “cold” waste at 28°C, which helps maintain the servers at an optimal operating temperature.
The Bistoquette housing cooperative is connected directly and the surplus is sent to the district heating network of the city of Geneva.
The data center thus recycles each digital action into physical heat. When a resident of the eco-district takes a shower or the underfloor heating is active, it will be thanks to the reuse of the heat emitted by the IT activity of the data center. In total, this data center at full capacity will allow 20,000 people to take a 5-minute shower daily
And what about summer? Well, on the one hand, “ we can’t stop showering in the summer », Answers Thomas Jacobsen, spokesperson for the group, quite rightly. On the other hand, the Bistoquette’Infomaniak data center will not be limited to the eco-district. With its few hundred inhabitants, Bistoquette does not need all the heat that the data center can produce.
Infomaniak has two options to continue to be doubly eco-friendly. The first is to inject heat into Geneva’s district heating network. Thus, in the same way as an incinerator, the city’s decentralized heating operator will be able to buy heat from Infomaniak. The second option is geothermal energy: this heat unused in summer will be stored in the ground in designated areas which act as a “heat battery”. They will be exhausted in winter, when the geothermal heating is operating at full capacity.
This is where we understand why digital activity has every interest in being as efficient as possible. Contrary to what you may read, saving energy is an ecological and economic issue on several scales. Thomas and Boris are convinced: by providing heat and using freshness produced by heat pumps, the profitability of their new data center where the energy circuit is perfectly controlled will be simpler to achieve than that of of a traditional data center.
In other words, if we focus on the right technical levers, digital activity can also become more and more virtuous.
Infomaniak: a cloud and productivity specialist
Infomaniak is a Swiss company, specialized in the development of cloud computing and sovereign productivity solutions. It notably offers a suite of office tools called kSuite. Word processing, spreadsheets, mailbox or videoconferencing system, the services offered are the same as those offered by the web giants. Better, for sending large files, Infomaniak also offers its in-house solution: Swisstransfer. With 50 GB available per sending, the platform goes beyond what is usually found with other file transfer services.
With their brand new data center, Infomaniak, tends to prove that on its scale, the Swiss company can change the situation and make our digital activities more virtuous. This initiative also poses a broader question. If a human-sized company is capable of optimizing its energy management, why are the giants of the sector incapable of doing so?
Infomaniak is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year, and with its free and ad-free alternatives to Gmail and Google Drive, the company currently reaches several million users. To date, it generates 30% of its turnover in Europe and in 2022 showed more than 70% growth on its B2B solutions. cloud computing compared to 2021.
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