Queen Mary University of London Delivers Data Centre District Heating Project with Schneider Electric and Advanced Power Technology

• Queen Mary University of London is renowned for world-leading research and is committed to sustainable development across all its operational and academic activities.
• As part of a new project to improve its data centre sustainability, the University worked with Schneider Electric and its EcoXpert Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT), to implement a new cooling solution that would enable heat reuse.
• By connecting with its district heating systems, the University has developed a data centre platform that can meet current and future research computing needs, while delivering on its sustainability strategy. 

LONDON, June 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Schneider Electric™, the global leader in energy management and automation, and its EcoXpert Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT), have delivered a cutting-edge, data centre modernisation project at the Queen Mary University of London - one of the world's top 100 universities.

Together, the companies have created a platform for heat recovery at the University's data centre, enabling waste heat from the facility to be connected to a campus-wide district heating network, providing heating and hot water for the buildings and student accommodation nearby.

The project not only reduces the campuses scope 1 CO₂ emissions in line with Queen Mary's sustainability goals but has also allowed it to reduce the costs of its energy bills. Further, the new energy efficient data centre has provided the University with increased resiliency and processing power for its on-premises, large-scale research and intensive computing applications, helping it to provision for future expansion.

World-leading research

Queen Mary University of London is ranked 94th in the world in the 2025-26 edition of the US News and World Report Best Global Universities rankings, and today has over 32,000 students from over 170 nationalities and 5,700 staff - with no less than nine Nobel Prize winners among its former staff and students.  

It is committed to conducting world-leading research and adheres to the principles of sustainable development across all areas of its operational and academic activities. Its vision is to create and oversee the evolution of a large-scale distributed computing infrastructure needed to maintain the UK's position as a world leader in particle physics.

As such, it is a participant in the Grid for Particle Physics (GridPP) project, a collaborative effort among particle physicists, computer scientists, and engineers to analyse data generated by high-energy physics experiments, such as those conducted at the world-famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.  

The size, scale, and importance of this work means that the University must operate and maintain a highly efficient, on-premises data centre - ensuring it meets the technical requirements of existing and future research developments, especially those requiring High Throughput Computing (HTC) applications.  

Legacy challenges 

Prior to the modernisation project, Queen Mary's data centre was experiencing reliability, scalability, and availability issues, which required manual on-site interventions to fix.  It was also becoming outdated, and its operations were, at times, impacted due to a build-up of heat in its server racks from its inefficient cooling systems. 

Future research computing may also have been hindered due to the data centre's hosting limitations. The refresh was, therefore, vital to improve and stabilise day-to-day operations, and its proximity to the campus' district heating network presented an opportunity for a new solution be designed and implemented to bring the data centre in line with the University's sustainability goals. 

Solution – a catalyst for sustainability 

Schneider Electric's data centre, power and cooling solutions were already installed across Queen Mary's estate, so when it came to the plans to upgrade its operations, the University directly sought help from Schneider Electric's partner ecosystem.  

Schneider Electric's long-standing EcoXpert Partners, Advanced Power Technology (APT), a leading independent supplier of energy-efficient critical power and cooling systems, was selected to help Queen Mary meet its ambitious modernisation and sustainability goals.  

Key to the strategy was the integration of components including Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure Row Data Centre solution - a pre-engineered, highly configurable, and scalable system, encompassing racks, power, cooling and management. It also incorporated APCä NetShelter Racks, APC NetBotz environmental monitoring equipment, InRow cooling and EcoStruxureä Data Centre Expert software - providing complete visibility and real-time monitoring for greater efficiency and reliability.  

The new configuration provided by APT not only delivered a more energy efficient cooling solution but directly enabled the heat recovery to support the University's sustainability strategy – allowing Queen Mary to transfer waste heat and reuse it directly for heating and hot water across various buildings including student accommodation, via a district heating system. 

Results 

As a result of the work by Schneider Electric and APT, Queen Mary has developed a highly resilient research data centre that has increased its processing power, is more energy efficient, and has helped it provision for future expansion. 

It has significantly increased the reliability and availability of its research data and both the systems' day-to-day operations and maintenance are more automated - requiring less manual intervention to keep the running at full capacity all year round. The university is also planning to move server equipment from across the campus into the new data centre, providing additional benefits including increased reliability, reduced costs and enhanced energy efficiency.

Speaking on the success of the project, Professor Jonathan Hays, Queen Mary University of London said, "The support we've had from APT and Schneider Electric has been unparalleled. Both companies came together to help us develop an exciting and innovative project which would enable us to provision for the future. The biggest impact is that we were able to deliver on what we promised while improving our sustainability. The new data centre is more reliable and efficient than ever, and through the heat recovery, we have significantly reduced our spending on heating and hot water, while gaining enhanced reputational benefits from taking a lead on sustainability within our data centre operations."  

"The project at Queen Mary demonstrates how digital infrastructure can be a catalyst for net zero, allowing today's organisations to benefit from the power of advanced computing," said Mark Yeeles, Vice President, Secure Power division, Schneider Electric UK & Ireland. "By combining innovative engineering with sustainable data centre solutions, the university has developed an enhanced infrastructure platform that will meet its research computing requirements, while supporting its sustainability strategy." 

"Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure Data Centre solutions were essential to help Queen Mary bring together its power, cooling, racks and management systems, and support the deployment of its high-density IT equipment needed for its research," said John Andrew, Technical Sales Manager, APT. "This approach also created a platform to support its sustainability objectives via heat reuse, while enabling the University to act proactively and preventatively to intercept and remediate potential future issues." 

To learn more or download the case study – visit the website.

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SOURCE Schneider Electric