OVHcloud wins Lille approval to pipe Roubaix data center heat into district heating network

OVHcloud has won unanimous approval from the European Metropolis of Lille to connect its Roubaix data center campus to the city's district heating network. The company said the project is entering its operational phase after ten years of study.

The campus is the heat source. OVHcloud operates eight data center facilities in Roubaix across a single large-scale campus, with capacities ranging from 8MW to 12MW, for a total site capacity of 64MW to 96MW. The facilities use water cooling, which OVHcloud says allows more efficient heat transfer into the local heating network.

The receiving network, operated by R Énergies, covers about 31km of interconnected underground pipe with 105MW of thermal capacity, delivering roughly 117GWh of heat a year across 205 delivery points. OVHcloud says the network's renewable and recovered energy rate is 77.2%.

OVHcloud is not the first European operator to recover waste heat from its data centers for district heating. Equinix has agreed several such deals, most recently with energy operator A2A to recover heat from its data centers into Milan's district heating network. Every facility in Stockholm Data Parks is connected to the city's network, and Microsoft says its data center region near Helsinki will be "the world's largest scheme to recycle waste heat from data centers" — a company claim, not an audited figure.

Germany requires data centers to make their waste heat available to local heating networks. OVHcloud's approval instead came through a municipal vote after ten years of study, according to the company.

The approval gives the Roubaix campus a second energy counterparty beyond the grid, part of a shift this publication has traced from grid tenant to power seller. It did not specify what OVHcloud will be paid for the heat, how much it will supply, or who funds the exchangers and pumps.