heata and British Gas project to deal with DC waste heat

Author: Simon Rowley

This month, a pioneering trial backed by British Gas will see heat generated from computing servers recycled to provide free hot water in homes, using ground-breaking technology developed by UK firm, heata.

The trial marks a huge milestone for heata founders, Chris Jordan and Michael Paisley, who hope their technology could help tackle the fuel poverty crisis, as well as being one of the solutions to one of the biggest environmental challenges of today – dealing with the waste heat generated by data centres.

heata’s technology, which was developed as part of an innovation project with British Gas, allows heat generated from intensive data processing (typically undertaken in a data centre) to be channelled directly into a hot water cylinder in the home; reducing bills for the homeowner, and avoiding the need for the energy intensive cooling needed in a typical data centre.

What this looks like in reality is a small compute unit attached to the hot water cylinder. This is part of the heata network – a ‘virtual data centre’ – and can process data for cloud computing customers whilst providing free hot water for the homeowner.

Each heata unit can provide up to 4kWh of hot water per day, saving households up to £340 per year. British Gas has this month launched a 10 unit trial running its own data processing workloads on the heata units in their employee’s homes, providing their employees with free hot water as a by-product of British Gas’s data processing.

Chris Jordan, Co-Founder of heata, says, “Waste heat is a big problem for data centres, leading to significant energy costs for cooling. Yet heat is valuable. On the other side of the coin you have an energy crisis and people struggling to heat their homes. Our unique technology brings those two things together. We’ve created a distributed ‘virtual data centre’ where the servers are attached to domestic hot water cylinders, enabling the heat generated by the data processing to be reused to provide free hot water in the home.

“British Gas launching this trial is a huge step and we would love to see other firms following their lead. By making a small change to where you process your data, businesses can have an impact on fuel poverty and the planet. Being able to say you have reduced your compute carbon footprint and provided free hot water to people during an energy crisis is hugely powerful for companies who take pride in their sustainability and social impact.

Paul Lodwidge, Head of Energy Product & Propositions at British Gas, adds, “Innovative projects like this are another example of how the UK is becoming a leader in cutting carbon emissions. heata is a true pioneer in the way it has developed a solution that can reuse waste heat and deliver significant cost and carbon savings. We’re proud to be able to support them with this latest trial and will work together to share insights and learnings that will enable the business to scale-up its offering.”