Lasercharm has won planning consent to build what it believes will be Europe’s greenest data centre location at Sutton, Cambridgeshire, which will use 40% less energy through absorption cooling.

The philosophy of the Elean Data Campus is to provide world-class data centre facilities in a discrete rural setting, using energy-efficient techniques to deliver low running costs, supported by a 400-home Eco Village which would be heated by the waste energy from the Campus.  Plans for the Eco Village are currently being discussed with East Cambridge District Council.

The six data centre buildings will be powered from multiple redundant sources, principally from the adjacent 38MW straw-burning combined heat and power plant, delivering demonstrable energy conservation.  The plant will only use 100% carbon-neutral waste as a power source, reducing its environmental impact and further establishing its sustainability credentials.

The waste heat from the plant will be available as an energy source for the Eco Village to heat the homes and also to cool the data centres through absorption cooling.

The absorption chillers operate through a simple heat exchange process using super-heated lithium bromide, which would be energised using the off-take heat from the power station, which consumes almost no new energy.

Studies have not yet been completed, however at this stage it appears that the data centre’s power demand, a theoretical maximum 72MW, could be very significantly reduced through the absorption cooling process.  Preliminary estimates suggest that the cooling load may fall by 30MW, a saving of approximately 40%.

The entire site benefits from being very close to a data hub, offering multiple carriers access to dark fibre.