Finland Recycles Computer Heat 芬兰回收电脑热量
语音：美式发音 适合泛听
语速：170词/分钟
关键词：recycle, data center, heat
Finland used to be one of Europe's poorest countries. Now it's a 1)hub for high-tech innovation. The big name of course is the cell phone company, Nokia. But there are many Finnish companies that run large data centers. These are essentially huge rooms of servers that computer companies around the world use to store their data. Now some of these servers are being put to a surprising use. 
曾几何时，芬兰是欧洲最穷的国家之一。然而现在，芬兰已一跃成为欧洲高科技革新的中心，个中翘楚当属手机品牌诺基亚公司。但是，在芬兰还有许多营运大型数据中心的公司。其实，那都是些摆满服务器的大房子，这些服务器是全球各地的计算机公司用来存储数据的。现在，这其中一部分服务器有了令人意想不到的用途。
This story starts in a 2)bomb shelter deep beneath downtown Helsinki. These days, the space is being used for something very different. A Finnish IT company called Academica is busy installing 3)racks for servers.
故事从深埋于赫尔辛基市中心地下的防空洞说起。现在，这些防空洞的用途与过去大相径庭。一家名为Academica的芬兰IT公司正紧张搭建存放服务器的架子。
Pieteri Parvinen of Academica explains that data centers do more than just store bits of information. All those machines also give off a lot of heat. They need to be kept cool. And that's where something called district cooling comes in. You see, about 75 feet below the server room is a series of huge water pipes. They carry cold water, usually Baltic Sea water, throughout Helsinki. That water is used to cool homes and apartments. Or in this case, a room full of running computers.
Academica公司的皮埃特里·帕文侬解释道，数据中心的功能不止是储存信息，这些机器运行时散发大量的热量，它们需要降温。于是，“区域制冷”就应运而生了。你瞧，服务器房间底下约75英尺（约22.86米）的地方有许多大型水管。水管里通常是来自波罗的海的流经赫尔辛基的冷水。这些水是用来给房子制冷降温的。而在这里，这些水就用来给摆满服务器的这个房子降温。
Niko Wirgentius: And then we realized that, hey, there are a lot of surplus heat related to these kind of a large scale server rooms.
尼科·文尊蒂亚斯：后来我们意识到，好家伙，大型服务器产生了大量余热。
Niko Wirgentius is with a city-owned company called Helsinki Energy.
尼科·文尊蒂亚斯供职于隶属市政府的赫尔辛基能源公司。
Wirgentius: And then we realized that that's the resources that otherwise would be wasted or unused. So we decided to transfer that surplus heat to heating network. This is a really simple idea. This is not a rocket science. There is two pipelines. One's come from our production plant and comes here to server room. It cools down all the servers and then that warm water comes back to our production plant to heat up the houses and domestic hot water.
文尊蒂亚斯：后来我们意识到，这种资源一不留神就可能被浪费或忽略掉了。因此我们决定将服务器的余热转移到供暖系统中去。道理其实很简单，不是什么高精尖科技。这里有两条管道，一条始于工厂，延伸到这里的服务器房间，从这个方向来的冷水给服务器降温。随后，被服务器加热了的水回流到工厂车间，最终为居民供暖。
Estimates are that these two server rooms can heat 500 homes for a year, even in Finland's 4)brutal winters. And using recycled heat, the thinking goes, will also reduce some of the need for fossil fuel. For Academica, the projected cost savings is 5)substantial, says Pieteri Parvinen.
据估计，哪怕是在芬兰的严冬，这两个服务器机房的余热也足以给500户居民供暖一年。如此一来，循环利用这些热能自然会在一定程度上减少对矿物燃料的需求。皮埃特里·帕文侬称，这对Academica而言，所节省的成本是相当可观的。
Parvinen: Actually, we have made calculations that our electricity bill will be around �180,000 lower than in a traditional data center.
帕文侬：实际上，我们算了一下，我们的电费比一个传统的数据中心要少十八万欧元左右。
Other countries are paying attention to what Finland is doing. Helsinki Energy and Academica recently won a 2010 Green IT award for their data center design from the US-based Uptime Institute. The two companies already have another eco-friendly data center in the works that will be ten times larger than the one in the former bomb shelter. And they're looking for ways to make at least some of the technology work in cities that don't use large-scale water systems to heat and cool their homes.
其他国家也在关注芬兰在这方面的创举。位于美国的国际正常运行时间协会最近把2010绿色企业IT奖颁给了赫尔辛基能源公司和Academica，以表彰它们在数据中心设计方面的贡献。这两家公司正计划再建造一个环保数据中心，其规模将是现有防空洞数据中心的10倍。同时，他们也正研究有效可行的方法，使这种技术的部分手段能在不使用大型供水系统进行供暖和制冷的城市中同样能得到应用。
