Volkswagen opens carbon neutral data centre in Norway
Published by John Williams,
Editorial Assistant
Energy Global,
The Volkswagen Group has moved into a climate neutral data centre in Rjukan, Norway. The facility, made in collaboration with the Norwegian partner Green Mountain, took 6 months to set up.
The data centre will be 100% powered by hydropower in the future, saving more than 5800 tpy of CO2 compared to a conventionally operated data centre. The maximum output of 2750 kW will be used by the company’s passenger cars and AUDI brands for high-performance servers, on which computer-intensive vehicle development projects are processed. These include the simulation of crash tests and virtual wind tunnel tests.
“We support digitalisation in all areas of the Volkswagen Group. With new technologies and digital forms of cooperation, there is a growing need for computing power in the company. As a result, we are constantly expanding our capacities,” said Mario Müller, Head of IT Integration and Services at the Volkswagen. “For us, economic factors and sustainability in the company are important aspects. The new data centre in Norway satisfies in both respects.”
In the future, the computing power of the new location will be used by the Volkswagen Passenger Cars and AUDI brands for their vehicle development projects. These include simulations of crash tests and virtual wind tunnel tests. Such calculations are not time critical, but very complex and energy intensive. Outsourcing them to external data centres hugely relieves the IT infrastructure at domestic locations.
Locations in the Nordic countries of Europe qualify due to their good availability of more favourable, environmentally friendly energy and weather conditions, which can be used for efficient facility cooling. The company already operates a carbon neutral data centre in Reykjanesbær, Iceland. It is about the same size as its Norwegian pendant, saving more an 6200 tpy of CO2.
The new site in Norway is located 180 km west of Oslo and was built by the partner Green Mountain. “We are very proud of the confidence the Volkswagen Group has in us,” said Tor Kristian Gyland, CEO of Green Mountain. “We are confident in our strategy of operating flexible and top quality computing capacities using only renewable energies.”
Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/electric-hybrid/25062019/volkswagen-opens-carbon-neutral-data-centre-in-norway/
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