German company Cloud&Heat has partnered with Norwegian firm Earth Wind & Power (EWP) to develop HPC infrastructure sited at energy sites and pipelines.
Dresden-based Cloud&Heat provides modular data centers that can connect to district heating schemes. Recently-founded EWP provides modular data center units at fossil, wind, and solar plants to use excess energy to power HPC or blockchain infrastructure.
This week the two companies signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) for a Strategic Alliance to ‘develop, deploy and market sustainable digital infrastructures’ for High-Performance Computing (HPC) and other data center applications.
The announcement said the alliance would benefit from EWP’s ‘expertise in turning excess energy into power’ and C&H’s ‘strength in developing and operating secure and sustainable digital infrastructures’. As part of the deal, EWP will purchase data center infrastructure from C&H and commission the company to set up, operate, and maintain the unit.
“By matching the energy surplus of one economy with the energy deficit of the other, we have launched a groundbreaking ESG solution,” said Ingvil Smines Tybring-Gjedde, CEO and cofounder of Earth Wind & Power and former Norwegian Minister of National Public Security and Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Energy.
According to e24.no, EWP was founded earlier this year and is funded by PetroNor executives Knut Søvold and Gerhard Ludvigsen, but is also listed as part of investment company Valinor Energy Group’s portfolio. Executives from Equinor and AGR are on the board, as are others from renewable companies SustainSolar and Norsk Vind.
“We are very happy about this cooperation, as all partners share the same vision of a sustainable digital future and optimally contribute their respective strengths from the very beginning,” said Nicolas Röhrs, CEO and cofounder of Cloud&Heat Technologies. “This is a joint pioneering achievement that could be replicated in other markets in the future and a great example of what can happen when you work together beyond your own traditional value creation levels.”
“Earth Wind & Power has a huge network and is opening up important new markets for us. This also applies to countries that may be underserved and have insufficient access to compute resources,” added Röhrs.
Last year energy utility Vattenfall partnered with Cloud&Heat to create a prototype efficient modular data center to be deployed in Stockholm, Sweden.
As well as drawing power from colocated solar panels or wind turbines, EWP says it is able to capture energy from flare gas on pipelines and use it for compute. In April, Energy and modular data center startup Crusoe Energy has closed a $128 million Series B funding round to develop its modular data centers that are powered by natural gas on pipelines that would normally be flared off.