UBITECH ENERGY participates at the kick-off meeting hosted by RINA-C (January 30 & 31, 2024) in Genoa, Italy of the THUNDER Innovation Action, officially started on January 1st, 2024. The project is funded by the European Commission (Grant Agreement No. 101136186) and spans on the period January 2024 – December 2027. THUNDER aims to overcome existing barriers hampering a wide adoption of waste heat from Data Centers, by developing sustainable waste heat recovery and seasonal storage solutions available to DCs in urban environments, in order to supply heat to neighbouring District Heating Networks and at the same time providing a cooling /service to the DCs.
THUNDER solutions stretch across the value chain (datacentre, innovative storage providers, heat pump providers and district energy company operators) and will be validated in field conditions at a Demo Site in Bulgaria. Deepened replicability assessment will be done and pre-feasibility analysis developed in 10 further Demo Sites across all over Europe. The THUNDER solution will be validated in a European region (i.e. Bulgaria) where the practice of Waste Heat Recovery (WHR) from DC is not widely diffused thus boosting the market also in those areas.
The participation of UBITECH ENERGY in THUNDER aims to install the THUNDER innovative solutions in the demo-site and to monitor the demonstration activities during the execution, by definiting a reliable monitoring plan at demonstrator level that will identify the monitoring requirements and metering (type of monitoring system, general specifications, location, number of sensors, data collection frequency, etc.) and allow during the monitoring period the collection of all the necessary data and information to perform a rigorous evaluation of the demonstration actions.
Additionally, UBITECH ENERGY contributes in the monitoring of the realization phases of the demo-site with the aim of i) detecting corrective measures and reducing delays during the implementation ii) acquiring and consolidating a series of lessons learnt during the whole realization process in the different implementation steps (planning, authorization, design, procurement, start-up).