Former Hemweg power plant
Name
Energy City
Location
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Concept
Data center, heat storage plant, wave surf park, panorama tower
2016 - 2019
Phase
Concept development
Surface area
100.000 m2
Decades of investments need not go to waste just because a power plant is closed. Finn proposes reusing the existing buildings and electricity- infrastructure to build a heat storage plant, datacenter and mixed cultural functions.
Transformation of the Hemweg power plant offers unique possibilities. Redevelopment into a heat storage plant at this location near the coast and the city of Amsterdam fits in well with future developments such as offshore wind, hydrogen production, heating of the built environment and large-scale energy storage, therefore proposing high-quality and coherent reuse of valuable assets.
Data center & heat storage
The 80-meter-high boiler room offers more than enough volume to accommodate a large data center. The data center is mainly cooled by transferring its heat to the low-temperature heat buffers. The hot water buffers can be housed in the former coal silos, and can supply heat to the existing low-temperature district heating network. If there is no heat requirement, the existing cooling water infrastructure of the former power plant can be reused for cooling the data center.
Panorama deck
The 175-meter-high chimney is the tallest structure in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The inhabitants of Amsterdam have given it the pet name 'cloud factory'.
This structure has such a robust size that it can be transformed into a panoramic deck. This can be the showcase of Amsterdam. The transformation potential of these chimneys has already been discovered in other countries, such as with the Yang Shu Pu coal-fired power plant in Shanghai, which was shut down in 2010. Existing assets are being redeveloped to serve as historical anchor points of the site: the gigantic chimney is a striking example of this.
