Deep Green data centre heats Devon pool, cuts energy costs
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- Deep Green has installed a washing-machine-sized data centre at Exmouth Leisure Centre in Devon, using oil to capture heat from the computers and warm the pool to roughly 30C about 60% of the time
- Deep Green founder Mark Bjornsgaard said the company charges clients for AI and machine learning computing power, provides the hardware to the leisure centre free of charge, and refunds its electricity costs — with seven other England pools already signed up to the scheme
- Exmouth Leisure Centre manager Sean Day said he had been bracing for a £100,000 rise in energy bills this year, calling the partnership a huge help against 'astronomical' gas and electricity prices
- Swim England chief executive Jane Nickerson backed the approach as pools 'embracing innovative solutions,' as BBC News had previously reported 65 pools closed since 2019 with rising energy costs cited as a significant reason
- Cambridge University professor Dr Julian Allwood said data centres on the whole used less energy than previously reported, but cautioned that large facilities can require billions of gallons of water and millions of pounds to keep cool
- Bjornsgaard framed the logic bluntly: 'A lot of the money that it costs to run a data centre is taken up in getting rid of the heat,' so Deep Green puts a small slice of compute where the heat is actually wanted
Why it matters: Public pools across England have been hammered by energy costs — 65 closed since 2019 — and Exmouth's manager was staring down a £100,000 bill hike. Deep Green's model flips a data centre's biggest operating cost (waste heat) into a free utility for a cash-strapped community facility, with eight UK pools now testing the approach.
