Tiny Data Centre Heats Public Swimming Pool in Devon
Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
I am turning a washing-machine-sized data centre into a 'digital boiler' to heat the Exmouth Leisure Centre swimming pool. By submerging computers in oil, Deep Green captures waste heat to warm the water, saving the council thousands of pounds while we charge clients for AI computing power. This innovative partnership helps public pools survive soaring energy costs and even refunds electricity expenses, proving that data centre heat can be a valuable resource rather than a problem to discard.
Data centres have got a huge problem with heat, and a lot of the money that it costs to run a data centre is taken up in getting rid of the heat.
- dn3500
What a useless article! I found some actual information here:
https://www.techspot.com/news/97995-data-center-uses-waste-h...
The "data center" produces about 28 kW of heat and the swimming pool has cut its gas bill by 62%. They are saving US$24,000 per year.
- cm2012
All data centers that are in controversial areas should offer free heated swimming pools for the neighborhood. You could add a giant pool complex as a percentage or two of the cost of a big data center.
- ano-ther
Here is a Swiss one that heats 6,000 apartments.
> The data center delivers up to 1.7 MW of reusable heat – enough enough to warm 6,000 energy-efficient homes in winter or provide 20,000 five-minute showers every day in summer.
https://blog.siemens.com/2026/05/sustainable-data-infomaniak...
https://news.infomaniak.com/en/infomaniak-inaugurates-a-revo...
- 9dev
Something I have been wondering: Why don't data centres use the excess heat for a sort of energy recuperation, turning at least some of it back into electricity?
- designerarvid
In my home town the local steel plant has been connected to the district heating systems for half a century. This is extremely mature technology and widely used in parts of the world where heating homes is more important than cooling them.