Schaffhausen
Servers that consume almost as much as an entire canton
A computer storage hall project is the subject of debate in Schaffhausen. The electricity needed will represent approximately three-quarters of the canton’s needs.
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Image d’illustration.
AFP
A construction site is underway a few kilometers from the Rhine in the canton of Schaffhausen. Under construction, a hall which will house computer servers on 8000 square meters, we learned on Wednesday in the “Blick”. Annual electricity consumption: 350 gigawatt hours. By way of comparison, the entire canton of Schaffhausen, which has around 83,000 inhabitants, needed 481 gigawatt hours in 2020.
The cantonal authorities plan to supply the hall by building a new hydroelectric power station on the famous Rhine Falls, which would reduce their flow. A situation that annoys a socialist deputy to the Grand Council. “For me, it is unimaginable to sacrifice a large part of our natural heritage for the production of electricity,” says Eva Neumann. She also denounces a lack of information and an abnormally fast procedure to issue the building permit for this new computer center.
waste heat
Another criticism, the structure is not very green. The heat rejected by the servers will evaporate when it would heat 12% of Schaffhausen households, according to government calculations. No recovery system for this energy is provided.
The problem would be on the one hand at the federal level because there is no clear legislation on the potential reuse of the energy lost in data centers in Switzerland. On the other hand, redistributing heat requires infrastructure that is currently non-existent in the region concerned.
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