Energy network for the Airport City region

It is a declaration of war against CO2: InterXion, operator of several data centers, and the Elektra Baselland EBL cooperative are joining forces for the Airport City region - smart, sustainable and ecological, as they say. The reason for this is the endeavor to use local energy more sustainably and to emit massively less CO2. The energy network is intended to heat buildings with virtually no CO2 emissions and to cool them in a sustainable manner. The project is also being backed by the Zurich electorate, which approved a new energy law by 62.6 percent in the vote on November 28, 2021. This law is intended to reduce the climate-damaging CO2 emissions caused by oil and gas heating systems by 40 percent. In future, oil and gas heating systems must be replaced by climate-neutral heating systems. Energieverbund Airport City now stands up for a regional, sustainable and climate-friendly heating and cooling solution.

Energy network has long been worthwhile

Data centers require a lot of power, but they produce a lot of waste heat when they are performing at their best. Until now, this heat has simply been released into the environment. So why not make smart use of it? Because then an entire region can benefit from it. The three partners came to this conclusion three years ago and, based on a study and clarification of requirements, planned the construction of an energy network with the aim of generating minimum emissions for heating and cooling and using the unused waste heat from the data center in the energy network. The energy density or demand in the area between Glattbrugg station and Balsberg for heating and cooling is so high that an energy network for district heating and cooling has long been worthwhile. "If we need so much energy, we want to use it carefully," says Hans Jörg Denzler, Managing Director of InterXion. "In 2011, we decided that 100 percent of our electricity would come from renewable sources. Since 2013, CO2 has been compensated. We therefore see the Airport City district heating network as the next logical step towards sustainable data center operations."

The partners of the energy network

For Energie Opfikon AG, it was important to carry out such a project with a leading and highly experienced energy and heat contractor like EBL. The energy group from Basel-Landschaft has been active in the heating business for 25 years and now operates 50 district heating networks in Switzerland with a capacity of over 163 MW. Based on a public tender with a subsequent evaluation process, EBL was also able to convince with the Airport City energy network. EBL will therefore now build an energy center on the InterXion site, from which the district heating/district cooling pipelines for Rümlang and Opfikon will then originate. It will be responsible for the entire project development, planning, construction, financing and operation of the plant. The energy center, with potential expansion options, will be located underground on the site of the Zurich data center.

The energy network uses the waste heat from these data centers as its primary energy source, which is available year-round and 24 hours a day. According to InterXion, the computing power of the two existing data centers and one newly added data center totals 41 MW. The waste heat, which is constantly available due to the 24/7 operation, is processed by large heat pumps and made usable for the connected customers. The waste heat from the chillers is used by the energy center to generate heat in the summer. In summer, customers require heat not only for hot water production but also for their operational processes.

Heat supply from winter 2024 at the earliest

The final project decision will now be made in mid-2022, and implementation is scheduled to start at the end of 2023. If everything goes according to plan, heat can be supplied from winter 2024. The acquisition phase has already begun, as Tobias Andrist, CEO of EBL, confirmed on request. Currently, conventional heating solutions, mostly oil or gas heating systems, are still in use in many places in the Opfikon/Glattbrugg area. Legal pressure will mean that these systems will have to be successively replaced. "We are now contacting the owners, inquiring about the respective status of the heating life cycle or whether a new construction or conversion is pending. On the other hand, companies or property owners can approach us on their own initiative," explains Andrist.

Operational safety guaranteed

But how secure is the supply of heat from data centers? Hans Jörg Denzler can reassure us in this regard. The reliability is very high, "the downtimes are no more than 10 seconds per year," says Denzler. And it is also unlikely that the company will abandon the site in the short term. That's because the long-term contracts alone with the data center customers who operate their servers at InterXion ensure that. "The service life of a data center in itself is more than 50 years," explains Hans Jörg Denzler. "This also applies to the diesel generators that would be used in the event of a power outage: These are only in operation for a few hours a year. Of course, they are constantly being upgraded." Fossil fuels for sustainable data center operation? That certainly goes together. If traditional diesel were banned, there would be a switch to biodiesel or synthetic fuel. "Since we have a high demand for operational reliability, we only use tried-and-tested products. We can't afford to experiment," says Denzler. 

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