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Innovative combined Data Centre & District Heating Project created by Queen Mary University, Schneider Electric and Advanced Power Technology
Queen Mary University of London is renowned for world-leading research and is committed to sustainable development across all its operational and academic activities.
As part of a new project to improve its data centre sustainability, the University worked with Schneider Electric and its EcoXpert Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT), to implement a new cooling solution that would enable heat reuse.
By connecting with its district heating systems, the University has developed a data centre platform that can meet current and future research computing needs, while delivering on its sustainability strategy.
Combined Data Centre & District Heating Project at Queen Mary University
Schneider Electric, the global leader in energy management and automation, and its EcoXpert Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT), have delivered a cutting-edge, data centre modernisation project at the Queen Mary University of London - one of the world's top 100 universities.
Together, the companies have created a platform for heat recovery at the University's data centre, enabling waste heat from the facility to be connected to a campus-wide district heating network, providing heating and hot water for the buildings and student accommodation nearby.
The project not only reduces the campuses scope 1 CO2 emissions in line with Queen Mary's sustainability goals but has also allowed it to reduce the costs of its energy bills. Further, the new energy efficient data centre has provided the University with increased resiliency and processing power for its on-premises, large-scale research and intensive computing applications, helping it to provision for future expansion.
World-leading research
Queen Mary University of London is ranked 94th in the world in the 2025-26 edition of the US News and World Report Best Global Universities rankings, and today has over 32,000 students from over 170 nationalities and 5,700 staff - with no less than nine?Nobel Prize winners?among its former staff and students.
It is committed to conducting world-leading research and adheres to the principles of sustainable development across all areas of its operational and academic activities. Its vision is to create and oversee the evolution of a large-scale distributed computing infrastructure needed to maintain the UK's position as a world leader in particle physics.
As such, it is a participant in the Grid for Particle Physics (GridPP) project, a collaborative effort among particle physicists, computer scientists, and engineers to analyse data generated by high-energy physics experiments, such as those conducted at the world-famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
The size, scale, and importance of this work means that the University must operate and maintain a highly efficient, on-premises data centre - ensuring it meets the technical requirements of existing and future research developments, especially those requiring High Throughput Computing (HTC) applications.
Legacy challenges
Prior to the modernisation project, Queen Mary's data centre was experiencing reliability, scalability, and availability issues, which required manual on-site interventions to fix. It was also becoming outdated, and its operations were, at times, impacted due to a build-up of heat in its server racks from its inefficient cooling systems.
Future research computing may also have been hindered due to the data centre's hosting limitations. The refresh was, therefore, vital to improve and stabilise day-to-day operations, and its proximity to the campus' district heating network presented an opportunity for a new solution be designed and implemented to bring the data centre in line with the University's sustainability goals.
Solution - a catalyst for sustainability
Schneider Electric's data centre, power and cooling solutions were already installed across Queen Mary's estate, so when it came to the plans to upgrade its operations, the University directly sought help from Schneider Electric's partne...
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By Irish Tech News
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Queen Mary University of London is renowned for world-leading research and is committed to sustainable development across all its operational and academic activities.
As part of a new project to improve its data centre sustainability, the University worked with Schneider Electric and its EcoXpert Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT), to implement a new cooling solution that would enable heat reuse.
By connecting with its district heating systems, the University has developed a data centre platform that can meet current and future research computing needs, while delivering on its sustainability strategy.
Combined Data Centre & District Heating Project at Queen Mary University
Schneider Electric, the global leader in energy management and automation, and its EcoXpert Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT), have delivered a cutting-edge, data centre modernisation project at the Queen Mary University of London - one of the world's top 100 universities.
Together, the companies have created a platform for heat recovery at the University's data centre, enabling waste heat from the facility to be connected to a campus-wide district heating network, providing heating and hot water for the buildings and student accommodation nearby.
The project not only reduces the campuses scope 1 CO2 emissions in line with Queen Mary's sustainability goals but has also allowed it to reduce the costs of its energy bills. Further, the new energy efficient data centre has provided the University with increased resiliency and processing power for its on-premises, large-scale research and intensive computing applications, helping it to provision for future expansion.
World-leading research
Queen Mary University of London is ranked 94th in the world in the 2025-26 edition of the US News and World Report Best Global Universities rankings, and today has over 32,000 students from over 170 nationalities and 5,700 staff - with no less than nine?Nobel Prize winners?among its former staff and students.
It is committed to conducting world-leading research and adheres to the principles of sustainable development across all areas of its operational and academic activities. Its vision is to create and oversee the evolution of a large-scale distributed computing infrastructure needed to maintain the UK's position as a world leader in particle physics.
As such, it is a participant in the Grid for Particle Physics (GridPP) project, a collaborative effort among particle physicists, computer scientists, and engineers to analyse data generated by high-energy physics experiments, such as those conducted at the world-famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
The size, scale, and importance of this work means that the University must operate and maintain a highly efficient, on-premises data centre - ensuring it meets the technical requirements of existing and future research developments, especially those requiring High Throughput Computing (HTC) applications.
Legacy challenges
Prior to the modernisation project, Queen Mary's data centre was experiencing reliability, scalability, and availability issues, which required manual on-site interventions to fix. It was also becoming outdated, and its operations were, at times, impacted due to a build-up of heat in its server racks from its inefficient cooling systems.
Future research computing may also have been hindered due to the data centre's hosting limitations. The refresh was, therefore, vital to improve and stabilise day-to-day operations, and its proximity to the campus' district heating network presented an opportunity for a new solution be designed and implemented to bring the data centre in line with the University's sustainability goals.
Solution - a catalyst for sustainability
Schneider Electric's data centre, power and cooling solutions were already installed across Queen Mary's estate, so when it came to the plans to upgrade its operations, the University directly sought help from Schneider Electric's partne...