Environmental innovation in data center operations
For years, our proprietary data center in Finland has set a global benchmark for energy efficiency, consistently outperforming industry standards. Over the past five years, our facility's average annual Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) has remained below 1.2, achieving an impressive 1.1 under high IT loads. In comparison, the global average PUE in 2023 was 1.58 (Uptime Institute, 2023). This achievement underscores our commitment to operational excellence and environmental sustainability.
Our data center features in-house designed computing infrastructure, which not only delivers technical advantages and cost optimization but also significantly enhances energy efficiency. The facility houses ISEG, one of Europe’s most powerful commercially available supercomputers and the 16th most powerful globally (Top 500 list, June 2024). Despite the typically high energy consumption associated with supercomputing, ISEG is engineered for optimal energy use, consuming less energy for computations than standard servers while delivering better performance. With 35.26 GFlops per watt-second of energy consumed, ISEG ranks #24 in global energy efficiency among supercomputers and among top 5% supercomputers in Europe (Green 500 list, June 2024).
Our innovative approach extends to cooling systems, which play a crucial role in operations by maintaining optimal operating temperatures for servers, thereby preventing overheating and reducing the risk of hardware failures. The data center employs free cooling, utilizing external ambient air to regulate data room temperatures instead of traditional chillers. This method eliminates the need for water and refrigerants, enhancing cost-effectiveness and reducing environmental impact. Our data center is designed to operate efficiently with server temperatures up to 40°C under full workload, compared to the typical 27°C limit in many data centers adhering to ASHRAE standards. This wider temperature range allows us to reduce airflow speed and avoid the energy-intensive process of subcooling inlet air during warmer months, resulting in an additional 15% energy savings.
Additionally, our facility features a waste heat recovery system, which repurposes server heat to warm residential buildings in the nearby town of Mäntsälä. Implemented between 2015 and 2016, this project positions us as one of the first in the region to deploy such technology. Annually, approximately 20,000 MWh of server heat is recovered, providing heating equivalent to the energy consumption of about 2,500 Finnish households.
