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Data Centers Used to Heat Olympic Pools
Emerging technologies are being used to benefit Olympic facilities. August 15, 2024
The 2024 Paris Olympics may have ended this past weekend, but the accomplishments of the athletes and the facilities are still being talked about.
At this set of games, data centers were used to heat the water at the Olympics Aquatics Center, Wired reports. Throughout the games, the data center, PA10, turned its hot air waste into water and piped it to a local energy system. At full capacity, the center exported 6.6 thermal megawatts – the equivalent of 1,000 homes - of heat out of the building. According to Wired, the data center can pipe the heat out of the building so cooling devices don’t have to work so hard, allowing for the games to have a cheap source of heat produced locally. Excess heat will also be piped to 600 local homes in Paris.
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Equinix, which owns PA10, also built a rooftop greenhouse on top of the data center with a functioning garden. Strawberries, tomatoes and other plants were grown to help with the heat exported from the facility, Fox Business reports.
The PA10 data center in Paris is expected to transfer the surplus heat, free of charge, to the Plaine Saulnier urban development zone for 15 years.
Mackenna Moralez is the associate editor of the facilities market.
