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This UK startup has designed a clever way to reuse waste heat from cloud computing

Heata currently uses these busy servers to heat water for households.

Using computer-generated heat to provide free hot water is an idea born not in a high-tech laboratory but in a dingy factory deep in the woods of Godalming, England.

“The idea of ​​using wasted computer heat for something else has been around for a while, but only now has technology allowed us to do this,” explains Chris Jordan, a 48-year-old physicist. that satisfactorily.

“This is where I prototyped the heat conductor that carries heat from the computer processor to the water-filled cylinder,” he says, opening the workshop door to reveal a 90-liter electric boiler. “We ran the first test and understood that it could work.” Jordan is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Heata, a UK startup that has created an innovative cloud network where computers are attached to boilers in people’s homes.

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View of Godalming, Surrey, UK. More than 4 million people in the UK struggle to afford heating.

LUIGI ADVANTAGES

Next to the boiler is a computer with a sticker that reads: “This powerful server is transferring the heat from the treatment process to the water in your cylinder.” A green LED light indicates the boiler is running, Jordan explains. “The machine receives data and processes it. So we can convey the equivalent of 4.8 kilowatt hours of hot water, which is about the amount of water an average family uses every day.”

When you sign up with Heata, it places a server in your home, where it connects over your Wi-Fi network to similar servers in other homes—all of which process data from Companies pay for cloud computing services. Each server prevents the emission of one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent per year and saves the average homeowner £250 on hot water annually, a significant reduction in an area where 13% of residents struggle to get enough money for heating. The Heata trial, funded by Innovate UK, a national government agency, has been running in the County of Surrey for more than a year. To date, 80 units have been installed and another 30 units are expected to have boilers for heating by the end of October.

Heata CTO, Chris Jordan, in his workshop.
The laser cutter creates insulation for the Heata device, helping to harness excess heat from cloud computing.
A series of heat pipes at Heata Labs.
Dave, a radio engineer, checks server performance at Heata Labs.
Parts of the Heata system before assembly.

LUIGI ADVANTAGES

Andrew, a mechanical engineer, installs Heata equipment in an apartment in Surrey. At 75% usage, the Heata unit will provide around 80% of the average UK household’s hot water.
Homeowner James Heather on his Heata: “We no longer need energy to cool computer components and we also no longer need energy to heat hot water because we are using waste heat from the equipment to do it. “

Mike Pitts, vice president of challenges at Innovate UK, said Heata’s solution is “exceptionally elegant,” calling it “using electricity twice—providing a service for a rapidly growing industry (electricity cloud computing) and domestic hot water supply. The startup is now part of Innovate UK’s Net Zero Cohort, which is identified as a key part of efforts to achieve an economy where carbon emissions are eliminated or balanced by other technologies .

Heata’s process is simple but brings a fundamental change towards sustainable management of data centers: instead of being cooled by fans, which are expensive and energy-intensive, computers are cooled by thermal bridges. patented to transfer heat from the processor to the machine’s case. Boilers. And instead of working with a data center located in a power-intensive location, Heata acts as an intermediary for computing: it takes workloads and distributes them to local households. method for handling. Businesses that need to process data are using the Heata network as a sustainable alternative to traditional computing.

The company has created what Heata designer and co-founder Mike Paisley describes as a distributed data center. Instead of cooling a building containing many servers, he explains, “our sustainable model moves data processing to [to] where heat is needed, harnessing thermal energy waste to provide free hot water to those who need it, turning a computational problem into a social and climate advantage.”

Participants in the Heata experiment were diverse in age and household composition, and their reasons for participating were diverse: a need to save on bills, a love of the environment, an interest in helping fight the climate change and the passion for seeing computers. heat the water.

The Heata group among the trees at Wood Farm, Godalming, where the idea was born.

LUIGI ADVANTAGES

Among the satisfied customers is Helen Whitcroft, mayor of Surrey Heath. “We started reducing our carbon footprint many years ago by installing photovoltaic panels,” she said. “We recently purchased batteries to store the energy we produce. Curiosity also moved us: the computer seemed unable to heat water, but it worked.”

Luigi Avantaggiato is an Italian documentary photographer.

#startup #designed #clever #reuse #waste #heat #cloud #computing

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