Heat you already pay for
A compute plant inside your site, delivering 1.29 MWth of recovered heat into your process at 55 °C (131 °F). MicroLink owns, builds, operates and maintains every part of it up to your exchanger. No capital is asked of you at any stage, and there is no obligation on you to take heat at any point in the term.
A partner, not a landlord and not a customer
MicroLink owns, builds, operates and maintains everything up to the handover exchanger. You provide a slab, a setback, one electrical tie in and a metered demand. The capital, the plant, the controls, the spares and the electricity bill for the compute load are ours. You take heat when you want it and pay in cents per kilowatt hour of heat actually delivered and metered.
The arrangement is deliberately narrow on your side. There is no building, no ground up construction and no new operating discipline for your team to carry. A licence to occupy covers the container footprint and the setback, and nothing beyond it. Your plant runs as it runs today.
Where your loop already accepts the delivery grade, the integration capital on your side of the exchanger is also ours. Where a lift is needed, it is scoped and priced at heads of terms rather than assumed.
Power is a single tie in at 480 VAC three phase behind your existing meter. We buy the electricity for the compute load and it never touches your tariff, your demand charge or your reporting.
No capital is requested of you at any point in this proposal, and nothing beyond the mutual non disclosure agreement is signed before the site survey returns a metered demand figure for your site.
| Item | You provide | MicroLink provides | The boundary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heat | A metered demand | 1.29 MWth continuous | Delivered across the handover exchanger. Everything upstream of it is ours. |
| Payment | Cents per kWh delivered | A heat credit | Priced per kilowatt hour of heat actually delivered and metered. You pay for heat you take, never for heat you do not. |
| Space | A slab and a setback | Two ISO containers | Licence to occupy over a defined footprint. No building and no ground up construction. |
| Power | One tie in point | 480 VAC three phase | Behind your existing meter. We buy the electricity for the compute load and it never touches your tariff. |
| Plant | Nothing | All of it | Cooling plant, controls, heat recovery chain and the dry cooler field are our capital and our maintenance. |
| Capital from you | Zero | Fixed at every stage | Including on your side of the exchanger wherever your loop already accepts the delivery grade. |
You take heat when you want it and pay for what is metered. There is no take or pay and no minimum offtake against you.
Delivered at a grade your loop already takes
Direct liquid cooling captures the heat at the chip rather than dumping it into a room, so what reaches your exchanger is warm water on a stable flow at 55 °C (131 °F), lifted to 70 °C (158 °F) by booster where a process needs it. Digester loops at 35 to 37 °C (95 to 99 °F) and sludge preheat below 60 °C (140 °F) take the native delivery directly.
| Sector | Fit | Loop condition | What the heat does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wastewater with digestion | Direct | 35 to 37 °C (95 to 99 °F) digesters | Sludge preheat sits below 60 °C (140 °F), so native delivery feeds it directly and displaces boiler or biogas duty. |
| Greenhouse and CEA | Direct | 45 to 60 °C (113 to 140 °F) hydronic | Direct feed into the existing hydronic circuit with no intermediate plant. |
| Low temperature district loop | Direct | Fourth and fifth generation networks | Direct where the network runs low temperature. Process makeup water absorbs delivery at 45 °C (113 °F). |
| Campus hot water plant | Partial | Hot water and preheat duty | Suits domestic hot water and preheat. Steam raising sits outside the delivery grade. |
| Legacy steam | Conversion | 180 to 246 °C (356 to 475 °F) | Requires a low temperature sub loop or a steam to hot water conversion before delivery is useful. |
The line that matters to you sits at the bottom of the drawing. The dry cooler field carries the entire rejection duty on its own. If your plant is down, in turnaround, or simply does not want heat that week, our compute keeps running and you have no obligation to take delivery.
Recovered heat is cheaper than the gas you burn for it
Your boiler is already paying for this heat. Delivered recovered heat lands at 12 to 30 per MWh against 35 to 55 for a gas boiler on the same delivered basis. It competes with your gas boiler rather than with your own cogeneration, and the integration capital on our side of the exchanger is ours in every case.
| State | Industrial power | Gas, USD per MMBtu | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ohio | 9.81 c/kWh | 11.35 | 2.4 |
| Pennsylvania | 10.33 c/kWh | 11.49 | 2.6 |
| Illinois | 9.19 c/kWh | 7.95 | 3.3 |
| New York | 19.0 c/kWh est | 15.69 | 3.6 |
| Virginia | 10.25 c/kWh | 5.57 | 5.1 |
| California | 20.06 c/kWh | 12.11 | 5.1 |
Two containers, one slab, one tie in point
The physical ask is small and bounded before anything is signed. Two high cube ISO containers on a slab, a setback for the dry cooler field, one tie in at 480 VAC three phase, and a pipe run to your exchanger under 200 m (656 ft) of buried soft dig.
What lands on your site
- Two high cube ISO containers on a slab
- A setback for the dry cooler field
- One tie in at 480 VAC three phase
- A buried pipe run under 200 m (656 ft)
- Licence to occupy that footprint and nothing beyond it
What does not
- No water draw, the rejection path is dry
- Nothing new on your discharge permit
- No ground up construction on your site
- No new operating discipline for your team
- No compute load on your electricity tariff
Codes and basis
- Fire basis NFPA 75
- Structural loading designed to ASCE 7-16
- Metering and settlement on EN 1434
- Energy reuse reported on DIN EN 50600-4-6
- ERE reported alongside PUE
Access and operations
- Our staff, our spares holding, our maintenance regime
- Controls separate from your OT and process control
- Access regime agreed at heads of terms
- Your safety regime governs on your site
- Incident authority named in writing, not left to practice
| Requirement | Figure | Note | Closes at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thermal demand | Metered, hourly if held | Firm demand replaces the assumption. The sector band is 0.5 to 3 MW thermal and the design carries 1.10 MW until a partner figure lands. | Survey |
| Loop condition | Flow, supply, return | Determines whether native 55 °C (131 °F) delivery is direct or whether a lift is required, and on whose side it sits. | Survey |
| Electrical position | Spare capacity, board | Single point tie in at 480 VAC three phase to existing distribution. | Survey |
| Space and loading | Slab, setback, ASCE 7-16 | Two container footprint plus the dry cooler setback. The structural case is the concentrated rack load. | Survey |
| Water | None required | Dry rejection. No evaporative makeup and nothing new on your discharge permit. | Fixed |
Every risk has one named owner
Each line below is written into the thermal supply agreement rather than left to practice, and the document chain that carries it is fixed before drafting begins.
| Risk | Owner | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Heat availability | MicroLink | No take or pay and no minimum offtake on you. |
| Compute availability | MicroLink | Your plant state never appears in our tenant's service level. |
| Capital | MicroLink | Containers, cooling plant, controls, exchanger and dry cooler field. |
| Maintenance | MicroLink | Ours up to the exchanger, on our staff and our spares holding. |
| Electricity price | MicroLink | We buy the power for the compute load. It does not touch your tariff. |
| Loop beyond the exchanger | Host | Where a lift is needed it is scoped at heads of terms, not assumed. |
| Measurement dispute | Shared | On EN 1434, with a defined settlement period and a written dispute route. |
What happens when your plant stops
Turnaround, an outage, a seasonal shutdown or a week where the process simply does not want heat all resolve the same way. Delivery falls to zero, the dry cooler field takes the whole duty, and nothing is owed by you for heat not taken. Our compute load is unaffected, so there is no pressure back onto your plant to run for our benefit.
Operating precedent at this delivery grade
In Odense the energy provider built a 45 MW heat pump plant taking data center surplus heat into the city network. In Greater Copenhagen a 22.5 MW campus on direct liquid cooling has contracted surplus heat to a municipal network for more than 8 000 homes from 2028.
Thirteen US states now hold laws promoting thermal energy networks, and the New York Public Service Commission has adopted rules letting utility thermal networks accept third party heat.
Separation from your operation
Our controls and telemetry sit apart from your OT and process control, with no shared network path and no dependency in either direction. Our staff work to your site safety regime while they are inside your fence. Access is agreed at heads of terms and incident authority is named in writing rather than left to practice.
What is stated and what is not
The delivery figures in this document are MicroLink's own, for one 1.25 MW IT load pod. The thermal demand figure for your site does not exist until the survey returns it, and no agreement below the mutual NDA is drafted against an assumed one. MicroLink holds no letter of intent at any site and is not in pre construction.
One pod, then the same pod again
The pod is the increment. It repeats on the same slab arrangement, the same tie in discipline and the same exchanger boundary until your site is full, and the ceiling is whatever your electrical position and your thermal demand can carry. Nothing in the design changes between the first pod and the last one.
| Tier | IT load | Thermal delivery | What it needs from you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edge | 30 kW | 31 kWth | A cabinet position and a small hydronic tie. Used to prove the loop before a pod is sited. |
| Pod | 1.25 MW | 1.29 MWth | A slab, a setback, one tie in point and a metered demand. |
| Multi pod site | Multiples of 1.25 MW | Multiples of 1.29 MWth | The same again per pod, on the same interface and the same exchanger discipline. |
| Facility | 10 to 45 MW | Above 10 MWth | A parcel on or adjacent to your site rather than a licence over a footprint inside it. |
The increment is small on purpose. You can take one pod, see the metered heat and the settlement run for a season, and decide about the second one with a year of your own data rather than ours.
What you get to report
Displaced gas is the part of this that lands in your own numbers. The heat is metered on EN 1434 and the reuse fraction is defined on DIN EN 50600-4-6, so the figure you publish is auditable rather than asserted, and it holds in a permit file, a board pack or a public meeting.
| Claim | Evidence | What it rests on |
|---|---|---|
| No new demand on the grid | Behind the meter | The compute load sits behind an existing meter rather than arriving as a new large load connection request. |
| Gas displaced on site | Metered | Delivered heat replaces combustion at your burner, measured and settled on EN 1434. |
| An industrial site stays open | Per site | The thermal payment lands on your operating cost rather than on a landowner's rent. |
| Reported on a standard | DIN EN 50600-4-6 | The reuse fraction is defined and auditable, so the claim holds in a diligence pack. |
| No water taken | Dry rejection | Nothing new on your discharge permit and no evaporative makeup at any duty. |
A conventional data center can quote a competitive PUE and cannot report an energy reuse figure at all, because it has no route for the heat. What sits on your site produces both, and the reuse figure is measured at your exchanger rather than modelled.
Basis and sequence
One site visit. We arrive with the data request and leave with a number you can check. Nothing beyond the mutual non disclosure agreement is signed before the qualification report on your site exists.
The document chain
- H-04
- Mutual NDA. The first and only document signed before the survey.
- H-02
- Survey and data request. A fixed list, so your site is assessed on the same basis as every other.
- H-05
- Heads of terms. Sets the shape of everything below it before any of it is drafted.
- H-06
- Licence to occupy. Over the container footprint and the setback only.
- H-07
- Thermal supply. Drafted against your metered demand, never an assumed figure.
- H-09
- Metering and billing. EN 1434, settlement period, dispute route.
The licence, the thermal supply and the metering basis are drafted together rather than in sequence, because the delivery grade, the tie in route and the settlement basis all depend on the same survey figures.
Sequence to delivery
- 01
- Mutual NDA, and a half day on site with whatever metering you already hold on the thermal side.
- 02
- We return a qualification report against a fixed template: thermal demand, loop fit, tie in route, footprint, and the heat credit at your delivery grade.
- 03
- Heads of terms covering the licence, the thermal supply and the metering basis.
- 04
- Design freeze against your survey figures, and the site arrangement is issued.
- 05
- Slab, delivery, tie in, commission, first metered delivery.
The fixed position
- Capital from you
- Zero at every stage
- Obligation to take heat
- None, at any point in the term
- Water taken
- None, the rejection path is dry
- Compute load on your tariff
- None, we buy the power
If the loop does not fit, we say it does not fit.
- Delivered heat figures are for one 1.25 MW IT load pod. The design carries 1.10 MW thermal against an assumed sector band of 0.5 to 3 MW until a metered partner figure lands at survey.
- Electricity and gas prices are EIA figures for March 2026. The New York electricity figure is a Con Edison SC 9 delivered estimate rather than a published state industrial average.
- Odense and Greater Copenhagen figures are as published by the operators. Thirteen US states hold thermal energy network legislation, and the New York Public Service Commission rules on third party heat into utility thermal networks are as adopted.
- FERC ordered PJM to revise its behind the meter generation rules. The netting threshold is not yet set and any arrangement is written against the rules in force at signature.
- Metric first with imperial in brackets throughout. Energy reuse effectiveness is reported alongside power usage effectiveness rather than in place of it.
- This document is issued for discussion. It does not constitute an offer capable of acceptance and no representation is made that any site named or implied is contracted, permitted or under construction.
One electron, two jobs
Your plant already burns gas to make heat this pod produces as a by product of work that is paid for somewhere else. We arrive with the data request and leave with a number you can check. One site visit, one NDA, and nothing else signed until the report exists.