One of world’s fastest supercomputers will run on 100 percent fossil free hydro power from Vattenfall

One of world’s fastest supercomputers will run on 100 percent fossil free hydro power from Vattenfall

(PRESS RELEASE) STOCKHOLM, 16-Nov-2020 — /EuropaWire/ — Vattenfall, a Swedish multinational power company owned by the Government of Sweden, has announced that LUMI, one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, will from next year run on 100 percent fossil free hydro power from Vattenfall. As part of a pan-European initiative one of three leadership-class supercomputers, LUMI, will be located at CSC’s data center in Kajaani.

As of January 1, 2021, Vattenfall will deliver a yearly volume of up to 100 GWh of guarantee of origin-certified hydropower to CSC´s data center in Kajaani, Finland. CSC is a Finnish center of expertise in information technology owned by the Finnish state and higher education institutions.

“Vattenfall wants to enable a fossil-free living in one generation. To win this electricity supply agreement shows that we have a product and solutions that well matches the needs of our customers in Finland. CSC has high ambitions to be fossil free and new digital solutions and technology can in a smart way be used to enable that. I will personally also follow the exiting development of the supercomputer”, says Magnus Westberg, Head of Production Clients at Vattenfall Business Sales.

In all service development and production, CSC strives to implement Finland’s goal of being carbon neutral in 2035 and to promote the implementation of the European Green Growth Program. LUMI will be operational between 2021 and 2026.

“Supercomputers consume a lot of electricity, so the use of hydro power is important to reach climate goals. Besides the advantage of renewable energy we have excess heat from cooling water, thanks to which waste heat can be utilized in Kajaani’s district heating network. This reduces both costs and the carbon footprint. LUMI will be one of the world’s fastest supercomputers and will serve European research and innovation activities, strengthening the competitiveness of Europe and increasing its scientific potential”, says CSC’s Managing Director Kimmo Koski.

The theoretical peak performance of LUMI will be over 200 petaflops (2*1017 floating point operations per second). This, like the performance of applications on LUMI, is approximately ten times faster than with the Piz Daint supercomputer, which is the fastest in Europe at the moment.

More information:
Vattenfall
CSC
The EuroHPC JU
LUMI supercomputer

Media contact:
Vattenfall´s Press Office, +46 8-739 50 10, press@vattenfall.com

SOURCE: Vattenfall AB