Italian telco and data center provider Retelit will use waste heat from its Milan data center to heat 1,250 households in city's Municipality 6.

Local utility company A2A Calore e Servizi, in partnership with engineering firm DBA, will recover the heat generated by Retelit’s Avalon 3 data center.

The project includes the construction of a new plant, set to be operational in early 2026, to feed the waste heat from Avalon 3 to the district heating network.

The plant is expected to provide 2.5MW of annual thermal power and a 15GWh increase in recoverable energy available to the network.

The companies said the project will enable an annual energy saving of 1,300 tons of oil equivalent and will avoid the emission of 3,300 tons of carbon dioxide.

“Thanks to this industrial agreement, which makes it possible to implement the first project of its kind in Italy, Milan confirms itself as one of the cities at the forefront of the ecological transition process,” said Luca Rigoni, CEO of A2A Calore e Servizi.

Roberta Neri, president of Retelit, added: “We are proud to invest in this pioneering project, the first of its kind in Italy, which will transform the heat generated by Avalon 3, which is already 100 percent green, into thermal energy for homes in the Milan area.”

Avalon 3 currently has an IT capacity of 3.2MW spanning 3,500 sqm (38,000 sq ft). It is part of Retelit’s wider Avalon campus in Milan, which includes Avalon 2 and Avalon 1.

Avalon 2 currently offers 650kW of capacity across 300 sqm (3,200 sq ft) and Avalon 1 offers 4.3MW across 8,900 sqm (96,000 sq ft) distributed over four buildings.

The Avalon Campus is interconnected via fiber infrastructure.

Founded in 1999, Retelit operates a network of 15,000 km of fiber and has a presence in 19 data centers (18 across Italy and 1 in Innsbruck, Austria). It offers wholesale access, B2B connectivity, ICT, and colocation solutions and services. Asterion acquired the company in December 2021 after previously acquiring a 24 percent stake in October 2020.

Recovering waste heat is an increasingly popular way for data centers to minimize their carbon footprint. Last month, Penta Infra partnered with heating company Polderwarmte to heat a nearby business park in Amsterdam using data center waste heat.