Visit our newsroom for all the latest media coverage on Stockholm Data Parks, including articles, interviews and social media content.
Updates about happenings and relevant media activities in Stockholm Data Parks, national and International.
The ever increasing energy demand of the data center industry needs to be tackled with smart solutions. In Stockholm Data Parks the waste heat from the data centers is captured and utilized for residential heating. While the data center’s cost for cooling is turned into revenue from sold heat, a new mark is set for how data centers can be integrated in modern sustainable cities.
Erik Rylander, head of Stockholm Data Parks, gave a presentation on the integration of data centers in modern sustainable cities at last week’s conference on waste heat arranged by Dutch Data Center Association in Amsterdam.
Digital services plan an increasingly important role in our lives and the economy and data centers are essential for these services to operate properly. This year, the conference was mainly focusing on how data centers can be integrated (from an energy perspective) in society for the benefit of both data centers, city and environment.
German public television lifts waste heat reuse in Stockholm as a way to tackle increasing power demand of the data center industry. Watch from 0:22:50.
Stockholm Data Parks and heat recovery mentioned as pioneering technology in Wall Street Journal.
Read article (Subscription required)
On September 12, Stockhom Data Park’s Johan Börje participated as a speaker and panelist in Asia’s largest data center conference, the DCD South East Asia Singapore.
Watch this video with Johan to learn more about the key messages he delivered and the confernce:
The world-leading data center training provider DCPRO and Stockholm Data Parks have agreed to work together to launch DCPRO’s new Center of Excellence in Stockholm. The Center will serve as the hub for providing training to data center practitioners throughout the Nordic region and Northern Europe.
DCPRO is delighted to announce the launch of a new Center of Excellence in collaboration with Stockholm Data Parks. Working together with Stockholm Data Parks allows us to enhance our course content with the best in class insights regarding some of the key trends for data center efficiency,” says George Rockett – MD DCPRO.
The first courses in Stockholm, named “Data Center Design Awareness” and “Energy Professional” will take place on October 16 and October 23, respectively. For more information about the courses, please visit https://www.dcpro.training/dcp-scandinavia.
“We are excited to be working with DCPRO to establish a center of excellence for data center training in the Nordics. Students from all over the region will have access to globally recognised courses, now also including the design and practical aspects of introducing heat recovery in a data center,” says Erik Rylander, Head of Data Center Cooling and Heat recovery at Stockholm Exergi and Stockholm Data Parks.
For more information about Stockholm Data Parks
Erik Rylander
Head of Stockholm Data Parks
Stockholm Exergi
erik.rylander@stockholmexergi.se
+46 70 693 51 84
In March 2018, Stockholm was hosting the DCD Energy Smart Event and Erik Rylander, Stockholm Exergi was one of the speakers.
Se the whole presentation by Erik Rylander from the DCD Energy Smart 2018
In San Francisco Johan Börje draw attention to how data centers in Stockholm can become part of the circular economy.
At Datacloud Europe in Monaco on June 14, Erik Rylander pushed for the opportunities created when data centers expand in urban areas.
Today, in many geographies data center growth is seen as a burden in the public infrastructure. However, when properly integrated, data centers can contribute to society and create win-win situations. Such integration can incorporate heat recovery and load balancing of the power grid.
June 12, the annual data center event Datacloud Europe will take place in Monaco. Stockholm Data Parks will be there, this time in a joint venture with Data Centers by Sweden, Business Sweden. In addition to being part of a panel discussion about Energy Sourcing for the Future Data Centre, Sweden is in the final for the Data Centre Cloud Awards – fingers crossed.
Sustainability is increasingly key factor when it comes to validating locations around the world. As large and increasingly scrutinised consumers of energy, data centers are under great pressure to improve their sustainability credentials. Energy sourcing is a natural link to this and is the focus of this year’s event in one of the panel discussions on the Critical Infrastructure Strategy theatre. We are looking forward to discussing the following topics:
In the panel: representatives from Stockholm Exergi, DigiPlex, Node Pole, E.ON and safely moderated by CBRE. From Stockholm Exergi, Erik Rylander, Head of Stockholm Data Parks participates.
The Datacloud Awards provide recognition to genuine inspiration, innovation and excellence. Along with three other countries; Denmark, Nigeria and Norway, Sweden is in the final of the Data Centre Geographical Location Award.. The priceRecognise excellence in the geographical location for data centres in EMEA,. The location have to utline the plans they have made to ensure that their location is attractive to operators and cloud services providers in terms of geographic location, fibre infrastructure and connectivity, energy availability, taxation and skills pool. And have to Explain why their location is uniquely competitive as well as why it’s important to the location.
Stockholm Data Parks will be present at the event on June 12-14 and one of the exhibitors in stand 58, Data Center by Sweden. Other representatives in this stand will be Node Pole, Business Sweden, Telia Carrier, Invest Stockholm and Stockholm Data Parks, Invest in Dalarna, Hight Coast Invest, Eon och Forlax Datacenter.
At the annual members’ meeting at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce on May 31st, Stockholm Data Parks was once again recognized as a leading example that makes the capital more attractive, competitive and sustainable.
Thursday, April 5, Johan Börje, Director of Marketing at Stockholm Data Parks will attend to Carpe’s Seventh Annual Greater New York Data Center Summit as part of a discussion panel. Discussion points will be Cost of development, Connectivity improvements tied to site selection and Analysis of on-site power generation methods, among other things.
At the DCD>Energy Smart confernce in Stockholm on March 13, two special site visits exploring two paths of building a sustainable city will be arranged for interested participants in the afternoon the day before the conference.
One of the visits will be to Ericsson’s new global ICT center where the world’s largets heat recovery plant with an initial capacity of 5 MW has been installed, soon to be expanded to 10 MW. At the visit, participants will be guided through the Ericsson data center and the cooling and heat recovery plant.
“Through the adoption of various energy efficiency measures, the data center industry together with the energy utilities can build scalable, flexible, and green data centers which are dynamic in their infrastructure,” says Jan Sjögren, head of global ICT centers building operations at Ericsson who will be guiding at the site visit and speaking at the event. “There is a great opportunity for the data center to recycle their waste heat, where we can potentially save on energy cost whilst generating profits as producers.”
The other site visit will be at Fortum Värme’s new Combined Heat and Power plant. Named KVV8 and recently launched, it is one of the world’s largest biomass CHP plants right in the center of Sweden’s capital. This facility is at the core of making Stockholm entirely fossil fuel free, together with other initiatives such as the extensive heat recovery and reuse from local data centers in the city. KVV8 has a production capacity of 350 MW heat and 150 MW power from biofuel.
Go to the website of the event, click here
Download the event brochure, click here
To register for this event:
– End Usesr/VIPs/Consultants, click here
– Vendors, click here
If you are interested in taking part in the event as a speaker or sponsor, please contact: merima.dzanic@datacenterdynamics.com
For more information about Stockholm Data Parks:
Erik Rylander
Head of Stockholm Data Parks
Fortum Värme
erik.rylander@fortum.com
+46 70 693 51 84
About Fortum and Fortum Värme
Fortum is a leading Nordic energy company with the vision to be the forerunner in clean energy. The company has around 8,000 employees in the countries along the Baltic rim, Russia and India. Ninety-three percent of Fortum’s power generation in the EU is CO2-free. The Swedish associated company Fortum Värme, jointly owned with the City of Stockholm, is the Nordic leader in heat, cooling and heat recovery solutions. The company has more than 10,000 residential and real estate customers relying on its services in the Stockholm area.
About heat recovery and Stockholm Data Parks
Fortum Värme has been promoting heat recovery since 1979, with IBM’s data center as the first supplier of excess heat. Starting 2012, the work was intensified and a heat recovery offering and market place named Open District Heating (“Öppen Fjärrvärme”) was launched. In 2017, it was decided, in cooperation with the City of Stockholm, grid provider Ellevio and dark fiber operator Stokab, to launch Stockholm Data Parks to encourage major data center operators to locate in Stockholm with a view to performing heat recovery on a large scale. Examples of other data center operators already supplying excess heat to Fortum Värme are Interxion, Ericsson and Bahnhof.
For more information, visit Stockholm Data Parks
You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter:
On Tuesday, december 19, Stockholm Data Parks hosted a live streaming by CGTN at Bahnhof, Pionen in central Stockholm.
Video based interview with Erik Rylander, Stockholm Data Parks
Borderlight AB, a leading supplier of advanced IT and Telecom services to the public sector and industry sectors, has decided to build a new data center with large scale heat reuse in cooperation with Europe’s leading district heating operator Fortum Värme in Stockholm, Sweden. With full IT load, the implementation will run at more than 5 MW and heat some 10,000 modern residential apartments.
Borderlight’s sister company GoGreenHost will provide the server blades and racks specifically optimized for heat recovery, with rack densities reaching up to 100 kW per 19″ rack. The cooperation between Borderlight, GoGreenHost and Fortum Värme is a strong validation of Stockholm Data Parks’ objective to attract and promote a data center industry where no heat is wasted.
The excess heat from the Datacenter will be captured, recovered and reused for heating of buildings in Stockholm. This is made possible by Fortum Värme’s district heating network which connects more than 10,000 buildings, representing an aggregated heating demand of 12 TWh per year.
“Borderlight’s and GoGreenHost’s target is to become a leading supplier of advanced IT services coupled with efficient heat recovery from data centers that reach close to 100% recovery of consumed electrical power. GoGreenHost technology creates a new potent heat energy source with a very low carbon foot print. Our plan is to contract installation of 30 MW in new data center capacity 2017 and another 60 MW 2018 in sizes from 1-6 MW per site, all connected to a redundant high capacity fiber backbone. GoGreenHost’s ramp up time to delivery of full heat capacity per new data center site is typically 6-12 months”, says Sten Oscarsson, CEO of Borderlight and GoGreenHost AB.
GoGreenHost’s solution uses new inventive heat recovery technology integrated directly in the server systems in combination with new heat pump design. Recovered heat energy is fed directly from the data center to the district heating network at the required temperature. Fortum Värme purchases this recovered heat from GoGreenHost.
“Borderlight and GoGreenHost will make a very significant contribution to Stockholm Data Parks’ objective to reuse data center excess heat on a large scale. It’s particularly exciting to see how the digitalization of our societies and GoGreenHost’s high-density technology can enrich one another to the benefit of all parties as well as the environment”, says Erik Rylander, Head of Stockholm Data Parks at Fortum Värme.
Close to ninety percent of all buildings in Stockholm are connected to the district heating network. The Swedish capital is one of the few cities in the world where large-scale heat reuse from major data centers is possible. The long-term objective is to meet ten percent of the city’s heating needs through data center waste heat reuse.
For more information, please contact:
Erik Rylander
Head of Stockholm Data Parks
Fortum Värme
erik.rylander@fortum.com
+46 70 693 51 84
Sten Oscarsson, CEO
Borderlight and GoGreenHost AB
sten.oscarsson@gogreenhost.se
+46 709 174 650
About Borderlight
Borderlight AB is a Telecom operator founded in 2001 focused on long term contracts in the public sector with Swedish government, regional hospitals and municipalities. Borderlight has been chosen as one of five suppliers in the Swedish Government procurement framework contract avropa that includes all government departments and approximately 50% of Sweden’s municipalities and regional hospitals. Borderlight´s revenue from public sector has reached over 500 million SEK ($60M) since start. Borderlight’s average annual revenue (including enterprise customers) the last years is 96 million SEK ($11M) with an average EBITDA of ca 45% for the past 10 years.
About GoGreenHost
GoGreenHost AB develops, builds and manages large volume of distributed data centers in sizes from 1-30 MW per site that are interconnected with optical fiber and new technology for highly efficient heat recovery of close to all used electrical power. This creates a new energy source for district heating with zero burn of fuel and very high reliability, since data centers is built for 99,6 – 99,999% uptime 24×365. Customers spans from public sector with government, municipalities, regional hospitals, to enterprise customers and export of large scale computing capacity.
About Fortum and Fortum Värme
Fortum is a leading Nordic energy company with the vision to be the forerunner in clean energy. The company has around 8,000 employees in the countries along the Baltic rim, Russia and India. Ninety-three percent of Fortum’s power generation in the EU is CO2-free. The Swedish associated company Fortum Värme, jointly owned with the City of Stockholm, is the Nordic leader in heat, cooling and heat recovery solutions. The company has more than 10,000 residential and real estate customers relying on its services in the Stockholm area.
About heat recovery and Stockholm Data Parks
Fortum Värme has been promoting heat recovery since 1979, with IBM’s data center as the first supplier of excess heat. Starting 2012, the work was intensified and a heat recovery offering and market place named Open District Heating (“Öppen Fjärrvärme”) was launched. In 2017, it was decided, in cooperation with the City of Stockholm, grid provider Ellevio and dark fiber operator Stokab, to launch Stockholm Data Parks to encourage major data center operators to locate in Stockholm with a view to performing heat recovery on a large scale. Examples of other data center operators already supplying excess heat to Fortum Värme are Interxion, Ericsson and Bahnhof.
For more information, visit Stockholm Data Parks
Leading fashion retailer H&M has decided to build a new data center in Stockholm with cooling and heat recovery integrated from the start. Energy company Fortum Värme will reuse the data center excess heat by distributing it to customers throughout the city. The new H&M data center is designed to handle an IT load of 1 MW and can heat some 2,500 modern residential apartments at full load.
H&M’s decision is a validation of Fortum Värme’s and Stockholm Data Parks’ ambition to attract and promote a data center industry where no heat is wasted. H&M has recovered heat from its Stockholm data centers since 2013, and the new data center, which will be operational in 2018, significantly extends and multiplies H&M’s contribution to heating the city.
“IT is at the core of H&M’s business, and it’s important for us to be as sustainable as possible in everything we do. Just as we collect second hand clothes for reuse and recycling, it will be imperative for future data centers to recover excess heat,” says Jan Lundin, head of H&M data centers.
The solution chosen by H&M uses heat pumps in an N+1 configuration. Excess energy is fed directly from the data center to the district heating network at the required temperature.
“It’s fantastic that a growing number of companies are connecting their systems to our district heating network and stop wasting data center excess heat. I’m particularly thrilled that H&M, which has been gaining experience of heat recovery in recent years, has decided to design its data center with a redundant cooling and heat recovery solution from the outset. It’s smart and profitable, and together we can make Stockholm even more sustainable,” says Erik Rylander, Head of Stockholm Data Parks at Fortum Värme.
Close to ninety percent of all buildings in Stockholm are connected to the district heating network. The Swedish capital is one of the few cities in the world where large-scale heat reuse from major data centers is possible. The objective is to meet ten percent of the city’s heating needs through heat recovery.
Erik Rylander
Head of Stockholm Data Parks
Fortum Värme
erik.rylander@fortum.com
+46 70 693 51 84
For more information, visit Stockholm Data Parks. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter
Stockholm Data Parks recently had the opportunity to speak about PPAs with Charlotte Unger Larson at the Swedish Wind Energy Association and Paul Stormoen from wind farm developer OX2.
Wind power in Sweden took a surprising step in the second quarter of 2017, with 232 MW of wind power being committed for new projects. In recent years, Sweden has seen growing interest in traditional and renewable PPAs with large corporations such as Google and IKEA driving development of capacity and business models.
Charlotte and Paul, what is a Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA)?
– It’s an agreement between a buyer and a producer of electricity. These contracts are outside Nordpool, the standard market for electricity in the Nordic region. They are typically used for large contracts over longer time periods: anything from seven to 20 years. For these types of time frames, it is difficult to secure predictable prices on the standard market. PPAs can be based on any type of energy source, but their recent surge in popularity has been driven by renewables and primarily wind power.
Different companies have different reasons for concluding PPAs. All companies engaging in a PPA want to get a predictable price over a longer time period than what is typically available on Nordpool. Some companies, like Google and IKEA, are also focused on sustainability and want to ensure that their consumption is matched by additional renewable capacity in the system.
In the build out of renewable wind power, the data center industry, notably Google, has been playing a key role. Since 2012, Google has contracted around 450 MW of renewable wind PPAs in Sweden. In energy terms, that corresponds to close to 1% of Sweden’s total electricity consumption.
How are PPAs connected to Sweden’s system to promote renewable energy?
– In Sweden, new renewable energy production is promoted through a market-based mechanism where producers of renewable energy receive a tradeable certificate for every MWh they produce. Electricity consumers are required to purchase such certificates in proportion to their usage. Price is determined by demand and supply on SKM (Svensk Kraftmäkling), an independent marketplace. By regulating the amount of certificates that consumers need to acquire, the Swedish Parliament influences the price and, thus, the subsidy to renewable energy.
The current scheme aims to make some 28.4 TWh of renewable energy available to 2020, most of which will be wind power, including capacity in Norway. Counting on-going wind projects, this objective has already been reached, corresponding to a capacity of around 9 GW. For 2030, the ambition is that the system should generate an additional 18 TWh.
The increase of renewable PPAs tend to accelerate the build out of wind energy, leveraging the tradeable certificates as part of the PPAs. PPAs reduce the risk for the parties involved and, thus, lower the threshold for a positive investment decision.
Paul, how are PPAs structured?
– Over the past year, the structure of PPAs has developed significantly. They have become longer and involve more parties to handle different types of risks. OX2 acts as a combination of broker and producer. We bring all parties to the table and match demand, financing, finance structure and ownership, and ensure construction as well as operation and maintenance. Typical ownership would be a pension fund with the support of bank loans in what could be a 50/50 mix.
To handle the intermittency of renewable energy, the deals most often require a third-party energy provider of some sort, with responsibility to ensure the energy balance when there is insufficient wind to fulfill delivery obligations.
In these deals, demand and price are fixed, and contract terms will determine how price risk is divided between the producer and the balancing party. To get an idea of price, the Nordpool forward market gives an indication, even though the timeframe and volume traded on Nordpool is shorter and lower, respectively.
Note from Stockholm Data Parks: prices are confidential, but considering Nordpool forward prices and current fierce competition, it can be assumed that long-term PPAs come in below EUR 30/MWh.
Sometimes, even an insurance company can become involved to handle counterparty risk, in case a consumer or producer would be unable to fulfil their obligations over a contract period.
For a customer who wants to ensure renewable energy for all volumes under the PPA, deals can be complemented with Guarantees of Origin for all electrical power that originates from other sources than wind.
Charlotte and Paul, in conclusion, what should we expect for wind and PPAs in the future?
– Now that the new framework for reaching an additional 18 TWh of renewable energy has been agreed, we are set for a continued expansion of wind power in Sweden, as evidenced by the strong figures for the second quarter. With the energy transformation going on in Europe and global warming looming, predicting energy prices for the future will remain a challenge. With that background, and wind power production costs expected to continue to decrease, it is likely that renewable PPAs will increase in significance in the years ahead.
On June 20th Stockholm Data Parks attended the ULI Tech Conference in London to take part in a panel debate on “The 4th Revolution – Urban Evolution”. The Conference brought together cross sector knowledge sharing in the real estate and land development industries. In the panel Erik Rylander emphasised the need for systemic and collaborative thinking, plus the valued add that data center heat reuse can bring in urban development.
Please find a copy of the Speakers Bio’s and a the Conference Programme below.
ULI Tech Conference 2017, London
ULI Tech Conference 2017, London
ULI Tech Conference 2017, London
Last week, May 24-25, one of Asia’s largest Data Center and Cloud events took place in Hong Kong. Stockholm Data Park was there.
Data Center World Hong Kong is one of the biggest events in Asia. Stockholm Data Parks, represented by Erik Rylander was there as speaker giving a presentation on “The next level of data center cost efficiency and sustainability”. Erik’s presentation attracted lots of interest and hopefully another step has now been taken towards the first major data center establishment by an Asian player in Stockholm.
View Erik’s full presentation: Stockholm_Data_Parks_DCW_Hongkong_May-17
Stockholm Data Parks had a chance to speak with Fred Jiang, Chief representative for China Telecom in the Nordic region. China Telecom is the largest fixed-line and the third largest mobile communications provider in China. The company provides services to more than 216 million subscribers, making it the biggest fixed operator in the world.
China Telecom is responsible for more than 62% of China’s internet bandwidth and has around 300,000 employees with a revenue close to $50 billion. Founded in 2002, the company is listed on the Hong Kong and NYC stock exchanges, with the Chinese government holding a majority share.
The company is present on all key markets, with nine offices in Europe, and recently decided to enter the Nordic region with Stockholm as the HQ-location.
Fred, why did China Telecom decide to enter the Nordic market?
– China Telecom’s strategy is to be present on all major markets. The Nordic countries are among the most developed markets with a high a penetration of services and appetite for new offerings. In the Nordic countries you find, on the one hand, more and more companies doing business with China and, on the other hand, more and more Chinese companies establishing themselves in the Nordic region. All these companies need high-speed, high quality connections to China, within China and to the rest of Asia. This is a great business opportunity for China Telecom.
Stockholm has been chosen as the Nordic HQ since it is the key node to collect and transfer all Nordic traffic to the China.
What are the key services that China Telecom are offering on the Nordic market?
– China Telecom has a very broad product portfolio addressing Enterprises as well as Operators. For Enterprises, we offer the full range of voice, IP and data services, including managed and cloud services. For any company having operations in Sweden and China, we can offer the best total solution for high-speed, low latency connectivity and data storage services. Throughout Europe, we back up our services with strong SLAs in cooperation with local partners. We are also expanding our offering for Internet of Things, like smart locks and smart windows, together with Swedish partners.
In a similar manner, we help global operators to secure high quality connectivity to China and other Asian countries.
What are the key advantages of the China Telecom offering?
– With our own, dedicated connection to China, we can offer the best low latency link connecting Stockholm with China in less than 110 milliseconds roundtrip delay. Over this link, we offer all types of connectivity at very competitive prices. In addition, we ensure the most efficient connectivity to all major cities on China main land.
What is China Telecom’s view on sustainability?
China Telecom views all dimensions of sustainability as very important – economic, social and environmental sustainability. Historically, we have been much focused on economic and social sustainability, including governance and transparency. China Telecom was elected “No. 1 Overall Best Managed Company in Asia” in Euromoney’s “Best Managed Companies Survey 2016”. In addition, China Telecom was also named as “No.1 Best Managed Company in Telecommunications Sector in Asia”. This is the seventh year in a row that the company has won the award from equity analysts at leading banks and financial institutions across the globe. China Telecom also strives to achieve an environmentally friendly development to assist the green development of the economy and society. Here we believe the Nordic countries are very advanced and are inspired by your countries’ solutions.
Article by Journalist Thorsten Winter, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, about energy solutions in data centers.
(Article in German) FAZ am 5 Mai Seite 42 – Eine riesige Energieverschwendung
The attack in Stockholm on Friday was a sad reminder that our open societies are vulnerable to assaults from intolerant forces trying to destabilize our countries.
Like other European cities which have been attacked over the last years, our resolve to remain who we are is only strengthened by acts of terrorism. Stockholm is one of the most open and tolerant cities in the world, and its openness and diversity are at the core of what makes Stockholm a vibrant, dynamic and innovative capital.
The manifestation in Stockholm during Sunday to honor and mourn the victims of the attack was a clear demonstration of our commitment to openness, respect of one another and our resolve to meet hate with love.
Our thoughts are with the victims and their families and friends.
Stockholm Data Parks
Stockholm Data Parks had the chance to speak with Torbjörn Bengtsson at Invest Stockholm. Torbjörn heads the ICT division and is Invest Stockholm’s representative in Stockholm Data Parks. He played an important role in bringing Amazon Web Services to the Stockholm Region.
What are the advantages of establishing a data center in the Stockholm Region?
The Stockholm region combines all the great things Sweden can offer ie lowest power cost in the EU, reliable power grids, green power and a great connectivity to the rest of Europe with the added advantage of being a major city. Here you are close to the customers. Stockholm is the head quarter of many large multinational firms as well as producing tech unicorns at a level not seen anywhere outside Silicon Valley. Being an internet hub with 125 connected networks and all major carrier allows datacenter operators and content providers to connect redundantly to end users across the Nordics & Russia.
What are the key reasons Amazon decided to invest in the Stockholm Region?
The adoption of cloud has matured to an advanced stage here and we have a high density of cloud-dependent companies, many of them using Amazon Web Services. For example, iZettle, King and Mojang rely on AWS for their infrastructure. Quoting from the Amazon press release, “An AWS Region in Stockholm enables Swedish and Nordic customers, with local latency or data sovereignty requirements, to move the rest of their applications to AWS and enjoy cost and agility advantages across their entire application portfolio.”
In general, datacenter operators look for the right conditions in terms of low energy costs, a strong renewable energy base and robust fiber connectivity. From a site perspective they are look for locations that will have as much of the permitting in place as possible and will allow them to scale up ie have plenty of power and room for expansion.
How will this benefit the Stockholm Region?
Apart from the obvious capital investment, head count in operations and construction at three different locations in the greater Stockholm region (the cities of Västerås, Eskilstuna & Katrineholm) this is a major addition to the Swedish IT infrastructure and will support customers across the Nordics in their digitalization, migration to the cloud and to grow their business. To attract a player like Amazon will of course also put Stockholm on the map for other investors and build a larger ecosystem around the datacenter and cloud industries.
How large are these data centers and when should we expect them to be operational?
AWS never reveal their investments by region (sqm, power usage, headcount or USD invested) but Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS told Swedish DI Digital that this is a major investment not only in terms of the infrastructure itself but also in the staff they employ. “Over time it could mean billions of dollars if Stockholm is a successful region, and all the regions where we have launched so far have been successful”, he said.
What should we expect next for Stockholm?
We feel that the Nordics and Stockholm especially so are in the focus for datacenter investors after the tax cut as of Jan 1st 2017 which gives Sweden the lowest power costs in the EU. The investment by AWS will of course strengthen the case for Sweden and Stockholm even more so. We will together with Business Sweden and our partners in the Datacenters by Sweden project & Stockholm Data Parks continue to push this message to our potential investors.
I think that the offer that SDP represent, allowing datacenter operators to be climate positive and get paid for their excess heat, will be an even more attractive proposition during 2017 and 2018, and that we will see more companies following in the footsteps of Interxion and Ericsson that have chosen to resell their excess heat.
Stockholm Data Parks had a chance to speak with Mattias Fridström, Vice President & Chief Evangelist at Telia Carrier, part of the publicly listed Telia Company that was previously the PTT incumbent in Sweden and Finland. Telia Carrier got off the ground in the late 1990s when it became possible for corporations to own and manage telecommunications and data cables across national borders. The company started to invest heavily in Europe and the United States, laying its own fibers as well as acquiring access to existing networks.
Today, Telia Carrier is a Top 2 world leader provider of Internet backbone connectivity, connecting global content providers and more than 680 operators throughout the globe. The company is present in most major cities in Europe and USA, with more than 220 points of presence worldwide in total. For example, 1.3 billion people play computer games that rely on Telia Carrier’s backbone connectivity.
Mattias, what characterizes a great fiber network?
– Assuming that all the basic technical requirements of a network are in place, the key aspect of a great fiber network is its redundancy. The choice of equipment is only a small part of this question. More important is a network’s geographical diversity. You need to ensure multiple routes between all large cities and countries.
For Telia Carrier’s major points of presence, we always have at least two access points, (called red point and blue point). This ensures very high availability for our customers and for their end-customers throughout the world. For transmission between Europe and the US, Telia Carrier has acquired access to over 10 different routes to secure the best possible diversity. For submarine routes this is especially important since repair times sometimes exceeds two weeks, compared to six to eight hours for a land connection.
What are important factors in a fiber deal?
– Closely connected to what makes a great fiber network, your ability to prove your network’s diversity will be at the core of any serious fiber deal. The more of a network that you own yourself the better, since for those parts you will be able to make credible commitments for SLA and repair times.
There is a considerable difference between deals for whole fibers and individual wavelengths, respectively. For wavelengths, prices have fallen significantly in recent years, with only small differences depending on distance between different locations. This is due to improvements in technology where laser signals need less frequent regeneration compared to just a few years ago. Today, a signal can travel 1,500-2,000 km without regeneration, depending on bandwidth. The price of a 10G wavelength from Stockholm to any major European city is around EUR 1,000/month.
Data center operators and their customers are looking for good connectivity. What does it mean and would you say that Stockholm meets those requirements?
In this sense, connectivity is the ease of access, on the one hand, to all content providers and, on the other, to all end-users through local ISPs. From this perspective, Stockholm is exceptionally well positioned. In addition to Telia Carrier being the largest Internet backbone carrier in Europe, 17 additional European backbone carriers are present in Stockholm. Of these, including Telia Carrier, 13 are global carriers – suggesting that you have excellent connectivity to all European markets at competitive prices. Already today, games and video streaming are provided from Stockholm to the European continent as well as to the US.
In addition, at the largest Internet Exchange in Stockholm, NetNod, with more than 125 connected networks, all the major carriers and ISPs are present together with all major content providers like Akamai, Amazon, Apple, Cloudflare, Edgecast, Facebook, GoDaddy, Google, IBM Softlayer, LeaseWeb, Limelight, Microsoft, Netflix, Riot Games, Twitch, Twitter and Vkontakte.
Finally, I should also mention that Stockholm has the best connectivity and connections in Europe for serving St. Petersburg and Moscow, and that Telia Carrier’s points of presence, of course, include the major cities in Asia.
Choosing Stockholm as a location, would latency be a concern?
Very few applications are sensitive to delays. In the industry, the general assessment is that latency would be a consideration for less than 10 percent of applications. Financial, computerized trading applications where a few extra milliseconds could make or break a deal clearly need to be close the trading centers. Otherwise, human users will not notice delays shorter than 30-40ms. Within that range of delay, you can reach far more than 100 million users in Europe and more than 50 percent of Europe’s GDP from Stockholm.
In today’s budget proposition by the Swedish government, two important changes affecting data centers were introduced. First, the previous change to lower the electricity tax for data centers in Sweden is suggested to be extended to data centers larger than 0.1 MW (previously larger than 0.5 MW). Secondly, ensuring neutrality between different cooling and heat recovery solution, it is suggested that the tax reduction explicitly applies to the production of heat and cooling for data centers also when supplied by an external company, like Fortum Värme in Stockholm Data Parks.
In an recent article from BBC Erik Rylander, Manager Stockholm Data Parks, describes the benefits of the district heating network in Stockholm and heat recovery from data centers and supermarkets, heating thousands of apartments yearly. The article notes a trend towards green and sustainable solutions within the data center business.
We are all under increasing pressure to reduce energy waste and the associated carbon impact and rightfully so! With today’s data centers consuming 30 times more power per square foot than the average office building and with the demand for electricity continuing to grow, putting ever more pressure on supply it is critical that we plan to use our resources more effectively.
That’s why the team at ABB really supports Stockholm Data Parks’ vision to create a place where the energy is green and excess data center heat isn’t wasted.
It’s something we’ve been committed to for years, through the development of ABB’s pioneering technology that ensures excess data center heat is used as a positive tool to fight climate change.
Our approach is simple; we design data centers that are greener and allow stronger integration of renewable energy resources. For us, it’s a win, win situation – we build efficient data centers where wastage and excess heat can then be used to warm homes across the city and conversely provide operators with free cooling.
We adopt a three-pillar strategy to reducing wastage:
It’s this vision and expertize that allows managers to take control of their infrastructure and visualize and control demand from day one.
Our ethos fits with Stockholm Data Parks’ aims. We’re committed to developing technologies for a ‘Better World’ and what better way than converting excess data center heat into power for a whole city? It’s the future and we all need to work smarter to make sure that we use our resources more efficiently.
By Henrik Palmgren, Head of Data Center Segment Europe, ABB
Some claim that timing is everything. Just before Stockholm Data Parks was launched, Forbes published its annual list of the Best Countries for Business. Sweden moved up four steps to the number one position.
Forbes ranking Best Countries for Business
It’s encouraging to read how the country has climbed from rank No. 17 in 2006 with Stockholm today being a new business unicorn creator on par with Silicon Valley, with names such as Spotify, King, Skype, Klarna and Mojang.
Since the objective of Stockholm Data Parks is to attract investments in large scale data centers, which engage in heat recovery, the Forbes ranking is important. But there are possibly even more important points to consider. Stockholm is in a good position to become the home of the Green Cloud.
Competitive electricity prices, an abundance of sustainable electricity and paid-for heat recovery lay the foundation for a sustainable and cost efficient hub for cloud services, where the reuse of heat can make the data centers net climate positive.
The vibrant startup community and the strong financial sector are important drivers for data traffic growth. Stockholm received 18% of VC financing to European FinTech during 2010-2014, and the city has become the financial center of the Nordics. Swedish banks have a 90% market share in Baltics.
The attractiveness of Stockholm has already been discovered by major companies. The city ranks third in Europe for Global HQ of Forbes 2000 companies, trailing only London and Paris. In addition, there are 127 regional HQs of Forbes 2000 companies in Stockholm.
The traffic-generating potential of the startups, the financial sector and the large corporations is augmented by the high appetite for cloud adoption and IT-outsourcing in the Nordic countries, as evidenced by the latest full scale report in 2014 by Eurostat.
Looking beyond the national border, Stockholm is ideally positioned as a hub for Northern Europe. Within 30 milliseconds of round trip delay from the city, there is an addressable market with more than 80 million data users. All these users could be served from Stockholm, with the plausible exception of the very most time sensitive applications that will likely be managed in edge data centers on a city-by-city basis.
Welcome to Stockholm Data Parks!
Johan Börje
Head of Marketing and Sales
Data Center Cooling and Heat recovery
Fortum Värme
February 14 in Washington DC, and February 16 in Sillicon Valley, Business Sweden arranges a power briefing regarding Swedish Data Centers.
The purpose is to gain insights from industry experts on how Sweden can partner with you in establishing a cost effective & sustainable presence in Northern Europe.
Stockholm Data Parks will be there.
The City of Stockholm launches Stockholm Data Parks to attract investment in data centers where waste heat is recycled and used to heat the city.
STOCKHOLM, January 24, 2017. A partnership comprising the City of Stockholm, Fortum Värme, Ellevio, Stokab and Invest Stockholm, today launched Stockholm Data Parks. The initiative seeks to help large data centers maximize cost efficiency and sustainability with low cost renewable electricity and paid-for heat recovery which is then distributed to Stockholm’s heating system. The long-term objective is to supply 10 percent of the city’s residential heating demand through recovered excess heat from data centers.
Stockholm Data Parks bring together the basic data center infrastructure elements to minimize startup costs and time to market for data center investors. At the ready-to-build sites, the necessary power, cooling, heat recovery and dark fiber infrastructure is predefined. The sites launched today are located in Kista/Akalla, the ICT hub of Sweden. Over time, data parks in other locations will be added to the program. Fully built out, recovered heat from Stockholm Data Parks will play an important role in the city’s future fossil-free energy system and data centers locating in Stockholm Data Parks have the potential to become net climate positive.
Setting new standards for sustainable data centers also entails reaching new cost levels. In addition to the cost of electricity decreasing to less than €0.04 per kilowatt-hour because of the recent tax change for data centers, Stockholm Data Parks will offer free data center cooling as a service in exchange for the excess heat when data center load exceeds 10 MW.
“So far, most data centers have been built with little consideration for the environment. We want to change that. With the significant synergies between recovered data center heat and the city’s environmental objective to become fossil fuel-free by 2040, I am determined to make Stockholm a major hub for sustainable data centers,” says Karin Wanngård, Mayor of the City of Stockholm.
“With a market of more than 80 million people within a roundtrip delay of 30 milliseconds, covering all major cities of Northern Europe, the Baltic states and western Russia, Stockholm is an ideal location for cloud players and other major data center actors,” adds Göran Långsved, Chariman of the Board at Fortum Värme.
For more information, please contact:
Erik Rylander
Head of Data Center Cooling and Heat recovery
Fortum Värme
erik.rylander@fortum.com
+46 70 693 51 84
Torbjörn Bengtsson
Head of ICT,
Invest Stockholm
torbjorn.bengtsson@stockholm.se
+46 8 508 280 06
Stockholm Data Parks had a chance to speak with Peder Bank, Interxion’s Managing Director for the Nordic Region. Peder spends his time between Copenhagen and Stockholm where Interxion’s Nordic data centers are located. Interxion is a Carrier and Cloud neutral Colocation data center operator with 42 data centers in 11 European countries in 13 different cities.
Peder, the market for data centers and cloud is booming
– what are the most important trends and drivers that you see today?
– The spectacular growth in computing has been going on for quite some time. What is different now is the concentration of growth into the cloud and colocation data centers. In addition to Internet of Things, digital media and cloud applications, important technology in networking and security has developed considerably and this has allowed enterprises to seriously start the transition to data centers and the cloud. It is a true digital revolution going on.
Today, more than 75% of enterprises have their own data center, but this is changing rapidly and companies are moving more and more workloads into the cloud and choosing colocation instead of building their own datacenters. The key here is that being present in a colocation center, you can have direct access to multiple networks and several cloud services. In this transition, service providers will play an important role to frame the right offerings.
In this new landscape, how would you describe Interxion’s
position and competitive strength?
– In Stockholm, we have had a strong growth the last 4 years and today we have a strong connectivity hub in Kista giving access to more than 60 carriers and we are the only data centre in Stockholm that can provide you with direct access to both Microsoft Azure and AWS direct node. We have worked hard for 16 years to make our data center one of the best connected datacenters in Europe. The combination of this allows for simple and efficient access to all networks you need to connect to and overcomes concerns about latency and capacity bottlenecks.
Imagine if you have invented a new game and want to role that out in multiple countries. How do you do that? If you come to Interxion’s data center, you could immediately get access to all the networks in our hub and, via the 3 internet exchanges get access to more than 600 networks to distribute your content/traffic and you can get extra capacity from the big public clouds when you need it.
Today, half of all traffic is on mobile devices and our attention span is short – we typically expect a page to load completely in less than three seconds. As a provider of a service, you need to bring together all the content, perform all processing and present the result to the user in three second. By being present in our data center, you can maximize your network performance and access distributed servers and storage in the shortest possible time.
In addition, let me emphasize our local focus. We are a locally operated company with decentralized decision-making, which allows us to move fast and adapt to new customer requirements. We also provide a high level of service by maintaining a well-equipped and professional local staff.
Looking a few years ahead, what should we expect
from Interxion in Stockholm?
– We will continue to build on our strengths, that is to capitalize on our communication hub and to aggressively build out our campus here in Stockholm. The campus idea is important as valuable networking effects can be achieved. Our uniqueness is related to all the connections the Interxion group has established in all leading European Markets with a total of more than 600 netvorks PoP. We can dynamically offer them more capacity in our data center allowing them to meet growing demands from local customers in the Nordic region. By bringing in the international players, the value for the local customers increases. So, it is a virtual circle. My expectation is that a huge part of Swedish enterprises in the coming years will move to data center campuses for gaining operational efficiencies and direct access to cloud services, driving the need for new colocation capacity.
You are using Fortum Värme’s cooling service to cool your
data center, how has the cooperation been?
– In our data center, we have a chilled water based cooling system. Working with Fortum Värme has allowed us to complement that system to gain OPEX savings. We get paid several months per year when we use the system since Fortum Värme can recover the heat and use it for residential heating.
The cooperation has been excellent. The service has been reliable and issues have been resolved efficiently. We continue to work with Fortum Värme and are right now exploring how the cooling and heat recovery can be redefined for our future expansion.
Cooling as a Service from Fortum Värme comes with heat recovery.
How important has this been for Interxion in Stockholm?
– For me, heat recovery is part of making our data centers greener. Why should you waste the excess energy when it can be used for residential heating? Reuse of resources is important if we should combat climate change. I believe that all data centers should recover their heat.
Today, heat recovery is part of how I position Interxion in Sweden, and it has been important in attracting customers. For international clients, our heat recovery approach has clearly raised the customer interest in Interxion’s Swedish data center.
*
DISCLAIMER. All information contained herein and any opinions expressed in it is intended solely for information. The information does not in any way constitute any recommendation to invest or otherwise modify any information that has previously been given by Interxion. Any opinions expressed in this document are subject to change and may differ from those expressed by others in the Interxion group.
