Data centre incorporates full heat recovery to realise Telia's ambitious sustainability targets

Telia is a multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operating across Nordic and Baltic regions. Alongside its own significant IT infrastructure requirements, it had identified sufficient demand from customers to create a new area of growth for the business. Its plan to build the largest open data centre in Finland marked a key stage in the company’s strategic realignment to become a full ICT service provider.

Royal HaskoningDHV Data Centres team was involved throughout the project, translating the strategic vision into a viable business case, creating a conceptual and detailed design, and overseeing construction. The design needed to address the security demands of a shared space while offering the flexibility to meet customer requirements. We also provided a full range of engineering services to realise Telia’s flagship data centre.

Full heat recovery system set up as part of the business case

Telia had an ambition for the data centre to be the most sustainable and energy efficient in Finland. An important way in which this was realised was through the transfer of residual heat into the district heating system of Helsinki.

“Heat recovery is a big topic in data centres across Europe,” explained Martien Arts, Director Mission Critical Facilities, Royal HaskoningDHV. “What makes this project special is that heat recovery was an integral part of the project. This led to an attractive business case for all parties. It was developed over a period of months in partnership with the district heating provider. One of our roles was to manage this process. Furthermore, the technical requirements to make the heat exchange possible, such as heat pumps and other equipment located in the data centre are incorporated in the overall design.”