Portable data centre to heat Scandinavian towns
Author: Joe Peck
Power Mining, a Baltics-based personal Bitcoin mining device manufacturer, has developed a portable data centre that will heat towns using residual heat from Bitcoin mining.
The first two data centres, housed in shipping containers, will be shipped to a Scandinavian town, where they will be connected to the municipal heating system.
In one year, one Power Mining data centre can reportedly mine up to 9.7 Bitcoin and heat up to 2000 homes. With 1.6 MW/h in power, the data centre achieves 95% energy efficiency, thereby providing the municipality with 1.52 MW/h.
A portable data centre design
The data centres are built in Latvia, at a cost starting from €300,000 (£262,000). Due to being put together in a shipping container, they are easily shipped around the world.
The data centre is made up of eight server closets, each outfitted with 20 Whatsminer M63S++ servers that consume 10kW of electricity each and create an equivalent amount of heat.
The servers can raise the incoming coolant temperature by 10-14°C, producing the equivalent amount of heat while mining Bitcoin.
Each server closet is equipped with warm and cool fluid collectors which send the warmed liquid to a built-in heat pump station, where a 1.7 MW heat exchanger ensures the redistribution of heat from the data centre to the town’s heating grid.
If the heating grid does not require additional heat from the data centre, the heated fluid is redirected to a built-in dry cooler, which adjusts the temperature to suit the needs of the servers. This way, the data centre is able to cool itself and also contribute to balancing the municipality’s heating grid.
Steps towards increased energy efficiency
The development of a passive heating data centre is one step towards increased energy efficiency in Bitcoin mining.
While classical data centres can collect heat at approximately 27°C, Power Mining says its data centres can collect heat up to 65°C, providing cities with more efficient sources of heat.
European data centres already make up more than 3% of the continent’s total electricity consumption, which is expected to surpass 150 TW/h annually – an equivalent of all of Poland’s electricity demands.
Up to 40% of this energy is turned into heat, which most often is released into the atmosphere. If this energy were collected and redirected back to heating, it could provide up to 10 million European households with heat.
Heat collection from data centres could become one of the most effective ways to combine digitalisation and climate goals.
