UK data centre startup Deep Green is using servers submerged in mineral oil as “digital boilers” to turn server heat into free hot water for swimming pool owners, distilleries, and large apartment blocks.
Digital Boilers
Harnessing the heat form decentralised data centre models is one of the new ideas that several companies are adopting to offer data centre capacity without having to build and run costly data centres, and offer free or cheap energy, reduce the environmental cost by making use of existing heat, and enable users to cut their costs and carbon emissions.
How It Works
Unlike other businesses like Heata, which offers to provide free hot water using the heat from a cloud business server installed onto the side of domestic hot water tanks in homes, Deep Green is focusing on business customers in industries using large volumes of hot water e.g., swimming pools. Deep green uses ‘immersion cooling’ technology i.e., immersing servers in mineral oil to capture the operating data server heat and transfer it into a site’s existing hot water system, for free. Deep Green supplies these Green “digital boilers” (a server and heat transfer system) for free, pays the business where it’s installed for the energy the digital boiler uses and, in return, asks for space for containers and sufficient grid and internet connection.
Benefits
In this way Deep Green gets to expand its data centre server capacity and network and the business where the server is installed gets to dramatically reduce its energy costs while providing the same service to its customers, reduces its businesses carbon emissions, and improves its ESG credentials.
Example
In what’s been described as a “UK first” in technology heating solutions, Exmouth Swimming Pool ‘took the plunge’ by having a Deep Green ‘digital boiler’ installed. It’s been reported that this has reduced the pool’s gas requirements by a massive 62 per cent, thereby saving LED Community Leisure, who manage the centre for East Devon District Council (EDDC), over £30,000 a year and reducing carbon emissions by 25.8 tonnes.
Peter Gilpin, CEO of LED Community Leisure, said of the new technology: “Deep Green’s innovative technology will dramatically reduce our energy bills and carbon footprint, meaning we will continue to be a key asset for the local community. We are already seeing the benefit. I’m certain this will transform leisure centres up and down the country for the better.”
Pools Are Just The Start
Although there are 1,500 pools in England that could all benefit from reduced energy costs, Mark Bjornsgaard, CEO of Deep Green, plans to focus on any businesses needing large amounts of hot water saying, “Pools are just the start.” Bjornsgaard says: “By moving data centres from industrial warehouses into the hearts of communities, our ‘digital boilers’ put waste heat to good use, saving local businesses thousands of pounds on energy bills and reducing their carbon footprint.”
What Does This Mean For Your Organisation?
This technology could solve several problems ate once – increasing data centre capacity in a more environmentally friendly way, reducing data centre carbon footprints, reducing business energy costs and carbon footprints, and tackling server heating problems in a productive and mutually beneficial way. Immersing servers in liquid to cool them down and installing servers and using their heat to heat water is already being done by other companies, but Deep Green’s model is different in that it combines the two and focuses on businesses (with major hot water requirements) rather than homes. At a time when electricity and gas prices are super-high and swimming pools are struggling to ‘stay afloat’ as a result, this type of service is likely to be very attractive.
