The British startup Deep Green aims to accelerate the deployment of data center heat reuse schemes across the country, following the deployment of its first heat recovery installation at a leisure center in Exmouth, Devon.
The company specializes in providing mini-datacenters, called “digital boilers”, which include servers whose waste heat is transformed into hot water that can be used by local businesses.
Exmouth Leisure Center is now home to the first digital boiler deployment, with the company claiming the installation will reduce the site’s gas requirements by 62%, cut its carbon emissions by 25.8 tonnes and save owners more £20,000 a year in energy costs.
Exmouth’s setup consists of 12 servers running a combination of power-hungry artificial intelligence, machine learning, and video rendering workloads, and the heat from these is captured using cooling technology by immersion and transferred free of charge to the site’s existing hot water system.
The savings side of the equation could be a compelling draw for other leisure center operators, the company said, given that many have seen their energy costs soar 150% since 2019 and around 79% risk closure as a result.
The company said it plans to continue the Exmouth rollout with similar projects in Bristol and Manchester in the coming weeks.
The technology also has the potential to be used by other types of businesses that have constant heat needs, such as bakeries, distilleries and apartment buildings. “Beyond swimming pools, 30% of industrial and commercial heat needs could be met by this technology,” the company said in a statement.
Mark Bjornsgaard, CEO of Deep Green, said that with so many businesses facing rising energy costs, his technology could make a huge difference to society.
“Current data center infrastructure is inefficient, uses a huge amount of energy, and generates a lot of waste heat,” he said. “Yet at the same time, many businesses need heat and face rising energy bills.
“By moving data centers from industrial warehouses to the heart of communities, our ‘digital boilers’ put waste heat to good use, saving local businesses thousands of pounds on their energy bills and reducing their footprint. carbon.
“Organizations that are serious about supporting society and reducing their carbon emissions should not overlook the massive impact of their IT needs,” Bjornsgaard said. “Deep Green now provides an answer.”
Jane Nickerson, The CEO of Swim England, said it was encouraging to see places like Exmouth embracing innovation to weather the energy price crisis.
“At a time when so many pools are struggling with massively increased energy bills, it’s great to see pools adopting innovative solutions like this, which have the potential to help facilities run more efficiently. sustainable, both environmentally and economically,” she added.
Transportation issues
The concept of reusing waste heat from data centers is not new, but it is an idea that has struggled to gain traction in the past because the amount of hot air that these installations generate is extremely difficult to transport over long distances.
The Deep Green approach, where data centers are co-located with the recipients of this heat, is a way around this difficulty, and an idea that others have also adopted.
For example, Computer Weekly has already reported on some data center builds in the Nordic countries where waste heat is pumped directly into the fish farms and lobster farms so that the ambient temperatures these creatures need to thrive are constantly maintained.
On that note, colocation giant Equinix recently embarked on a similar build at one of its data center sites in Paris, where its waste heat is used to power a rooftop city farm.
This project, supervised by Reid Brewin Architects (RBA), is presented as a one-of-a-kind construction in France and consists of a 430 square meter air-conditioned greenhouse which is used to grow seasonal fruits and vegetables. above the data center facility.
“It is increasingly important that we scale up our actions and mitigate the environmental impact of an increasingly digital world,” said RBA Director John Hutchinson. “Sustainability and environmental protection are at the heart of everything we do, and this opportunity has already inspired other initiatives within our customer base.”