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Published on June 28th, 2010 | by Susan Kraemer

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Why There’s a 1 MW Power Station Under a Helsinki Cathedral

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The energetic founder of Finnish energy monitoring giant BaseN was walking past data centers to measure their heat output as part of trying to make their own data center more efficient, when he had a real Eureka moment.

Instead of seeing all the wasted heat energy from the computer server farms as a problem, BaseN’s Pasi Hurri suddenly realized that he was looking at a potential heat and power station.

“We were contemplating a new data center that would be efficient, and walked past data centers, getting thermal output measurements,” the genial BaseN CEO told me and a group of ecobloggers on a tour of Finnish green-tech.

“Most data centers don’t realize how much they are wasting, but we saw a couple of places spewing out more than I megawatt!”

Image: Pablo Päster of TreehuggerBaseN_Power_station

Their server farm under Helsinki's Uspenski Cathedral is now a 1 megawatt power station

(In Finland they translate heat output, not from BTUs, but from, yes:  “saunas” directly into Megawatt-equivalents) Realizing that the energy business has a hundred and twenty times more potential than the energy monitoring business, he joined forces with the equally visionary  Matti Roto of Academica Oy to build their data-center-cum-power-station in downtown Helsinki to warm residents in the city (previous story).

They found the perfect spot, housed in a former bomb shelter, deep in bedrock under the Russian-influenced Uspenski Cathedral in downtown Helsinki, and built their first data farm, set to start sending the equivalent of a megawatt in heat energy to Helsinki’s district heating network this month.

Finland only became independent of the USSR in the middle of the last century, and the district heating system was one of the frugal ideas inherited from the soviet system that has actually turned out to be a very useful green technology  in a newly carbon-constrained world.

This data farm/power station uses district heating to heat the Helsinki equivalent of 500 single family houses. City apartments are more efficient, but houses in Finland can use a Wyoming-like 9,000 kWh annually, with temperatures in the below zeros and long dark winter days when the only light you see all winter is electric. The power plant can also serve as an emergency backup, providing its own electric power if the city’s electricity goes down.

And that’s just the beginning. BaseN has one thousand servers around the world. Next, the energetic and enthusiastic pair from Academica Oy and BaseN now plan a new joint project ten times this size.



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  • http://www.willmatheson.com William Matheson

    Finland was never ruled by the USSR (past 1917, anyway). They were officially neutral throughout the Cold War. The history of Finno-Soviet relations (and outright war) is quite intricate and complex, though.

  • Matti Olkinuora

    Few corrections about Finland

    – Finland declared independence Dec 6, 1917 and the independence was recognized Jan 4, 1918

    – Finland was part of Sweden and Russia, switching back and forth during the wars.

    – Finland was never part of USSR, since it was established 1922

  • Matti Olkinuora

    Yes. I know. I live here (in Finland) :D

    Finland had to do lots of balancing between east and west, especially since USSR was our biggest trade partner. When the USSR came crashing down Finland went in to a deep economic depression.

    It’s soooo great that we gained independence from Russia, before it became USSR. We would be screwed right now.

  • Pete Lundin

    This writer obviously knows nothing what she’s writing about. Her ideas about Finnish history are so thoroughly twisted that I don’t know where to start. But let’s give it a try:
    1. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922. It was formed by Russia and a few other countries but not Finland.
    2. Finland gained independence in 1917. This was the decade before the 1920’s. So please explain how Finland could gain independence from the USSR when it did not exist at the time! In 1917 there were no communist countries in existence anywhere. Russia was a republic run by the Provisional Government (google it).
    3. Even prior to 1917 Finland was autonomous, it had it’s own parliament and government (called the Senate). The democratic system was the most advanced in the world, granting full political rights to all citizens, including women. Finland was not however fully independent because the head of state was the Russian Czar, who had a governor in Finland. Much like PRESENT-DAY NEW ZELAND, where the head of state is the Queen of England, who also has a governor in NZ, presently Mr. Anand Satyanand.
    4. Obviously if Finland became fully independent in 1917, it could not have happened “in the middle of the last century”. By “the middle of the last century” Finland had already been fully independent for more than thirty years, which is more than can be said of present-day NZ.
    5. It is true, though, that Finland is a technology leader in many areas including datacenters:
    http://www.fincloud.freehostingcloud.com/

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