Amazon Heats Building With Data Center Waste Heat
SEATTLE—In what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind system, Amazon will use the waste heat from a large data center to provide much of the heat in its high-rise campus under construction in downtown Seattle. Once it’s implemented, Amazon will save three-quarters of the electricity it would have bought for heat otherwise, according to McKinstry, a Seattle construction and energy services company working on the project. Amazon will begin by heating its offices in the 34-story former Westin Building. The company is planning the eventual creation of a “heating district”—several buildings that will be heated using the waste heat of the data center. The “heating district” will consist of several buildings on the three-block Amazon campus.
