The swimming pool heated by tiny computers

Are good ideas always surprising? A swimming pool has found a surprising way to
keep its costs down using a “digital boiler” provided by a tech company

Heating bills are going up everywhere. But one leisure centre in Devon has found a way to keep their bills down thanks to the power of data. Exmouth Leisure Centre has teamed up with the technology company Deep Green to keep their swimmers warm for less.

Deep Green provides the pool with a “digital boiler”. This is actually a data centre, a box the size of a washing machine filled with tiny computers. While the computers inside the box whir away crunching numbers they generate a lot of heat.

The tiny computers in the data centre are surrounded by mineral oil which is heated by the computers. This is then pumped into a heat exchanger which
warms the water that goes into the pool. The data centre creates enough heat for 60% of the pool’s needs.

Sean Day, who runs the Exmouth Leisure Centre, had been expecting its energy bills to rise by £100,000. “The partnership has really helped us
reduce the costs.” Not only does it save the leisure centre money, but it prevents the energy from the data centre going to waste.

“Data centres have got a huge problem with heat,” Mark Bjornsgaard, the founder of Deep Green said. “A lot of the money that it costs to run a data centre is taken up in getting rid of the heat. “And so what we’ve done is taken a very small bit of a data centre to where the heat is useful.”