Deep Green sets its data centers in locations that could benefit from the heat generated by them.
By heating a 25-meter and children’s pool with leftover heat from a data center, startup Deep Green expects to save a public pool in the UK £20,000 (about $24,000) and reduce carbon emissions by 25.8 tons yearly. Owners of data centers have long attempted to reduce the impact of heat produced by their equipment; some have even gone so far as to submerge computers in water, while others have discovered ways to reroute waste heat so that it may warm broader regions, such as buildings and towns. Deep Green, a UK-based newcomer to the data-center heat game, is making a splash by placing a dollar amount on potential savings that are made possible by the heat’s extremely low free rate.
The paying clients of Deep Green are companies in machine learning and AI looking for computing resources. Customers can use Deep Green’s 28 kW system with high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities, as Datacenter Dynamics revealed on Tuesday. According to Deep Green CEO Mark Bjornsgaard, the HPC cluster at the Exmouth Leisure Centre swimming pool contains 12 four-CPU cards and may potentially be used for cloud services and video processing. The server is around the size of a washing machine, according to the BBC.
The computers are submerged in mineral oil, which absorbs heat and uses a heat exchanger to transmit it to pool water. A gas boiler is still present in the pool to raise the water’s temperature as needed. According to Deep Green, it is transmitting around 96 percent of the energy utilized by its computers and using 62 percent less gas to heat a pool. The Exmouth Leisure Centre receives free heat while Deep Green pays for all the electricity its data center consumes, as well as any setup fees.
“Our estimated heat transfer from the kit is 139,284 kWh a year, comparable to 62 percent of the pool’s heat needs,” said Deep Green CTO Mat Craggs to Datacenter Dynamics. He mentioned how including more 70 or 80 percent could be reached by adding servers to the tub. According to the BBC, Deep Green’s data center can heat the 25-meter pool at the Exmouth Leisure Complex to 86 degrees Fahrenheit for roughly 60% of the time. The startup has plans to set up data centers in seven more UK locations and has a 2023 target of 20 locations.
attempting to practicalize data center heat recovery
Deep Green is one of many businesses attempting to recycle data center heat, along with Qarnot in France and Heata in England, which claims to reuse data center heat to heat water for those in need. For years, other data centers, including several owned by IBM, have investigated using data-center waste heat. Additionally, several US businesses sell the waste heat from data centers, and other areas currently use it to stay warm. Notably, the computer behemoth Microsoft revealed plans to supply some regions of Finland with waste heat from a data center it is constructing there last year.
Data-center heat redistribution is currently a small sector, despite the enormous amount of energy that data centers worldwide consume. That’s in part
due to the expenses and difficulties data center firms experience in distributing heat, including (depending on the nation) the cost of connecting to a regional district heating system. Depending on the technologies being employed, heat recycling may potentially be more challenging. According to Oslo-based IT company Cloud&Heat, heat from data centers with water cooling, which many businesses have used to reduce heat generation and improve performance, can be more difficult to recycle.
According to Bloomberg, Germany began considering this year the notion of regulating data centers to give heat to surrounding houses, but is struggling due to a lack of interest from the potential receivers. Fundamentally, waste heat can’t reach hot enough temperatures on its own, so heat pumps with their
own power and financial costs.
“Operators of data centers are generally eager and willing to donate their waste heat. Finding someone who can utilize that heat economically is the difficulty here, according to Ralph Hintemann, senior researcher at data-center advocacy group Borderstep, in a statement to Bloomberg.
According to Bloomberg, the 1,300-apartment residential community in Germany that is scheduled to open in mid-2025 will have no choice but to accept some of its heat from a server farm nearby, with expected carbon emissions savings the equivalent of taking 200 combustion engine vehicles off the road. However, this idea is still in the early stages and is only practical because the data center, Telehouse Germany GmbH, is so close (0.3 miles / 500 meters) to the planned neighborhood.
