A money-saving hack for council members is to use the heat generated by small data centers to keep the public swimming pools warm. A Devon public swimming pool in the United Kingdom is using the heat generated by a washing-machine-sized data center.
It’s a win-win situation; the swimmers aren’t shivering and the city isn’t breaking the bank. Exmouth Leisure Centre is able to save thousands of pounds after the computers inside the box are able to get the pool to approximately 30 degrees Celcius 60 percent of the time. The data center isn’t charging the council anything to take advantage of this technology.
Start-up Deep Green Founder Mark Bjornsgaard said the council is entitled to a reimbursement on electricity bills for running the digital boiler. Seven other England pools have signed up to use this system.
The process involves hot oil pumped into a heat exchanger to warm the water in the pool. Sean Day, who leads the leisure center, said: “He had been expecting its energy bills to rise by £100,000 this year.”
“The partnership has really helped us reduce the costs of what has been astronomical over the last 12 months — our energy prices and gas prices have gone through the roof,” Bjornsgaard said. “Looking at different ways of how we can save money as an organization has been awesome.”
Cambridge University professor of engineering and the environment Dr. Julian Allwood said: “If it’s a sensible idea and it saves the leisure centre some money, then why not?” concluding that data centers are energy effective.