The idea is eccentric, but makes sense. The light of the light is in the clouds. Gas boilers are condemned to extinguish. And the demand for computing capacity does not stop growing. The solution: replace the boilers with a cluster of 500 Raspberry Pi to generate heat.
Mini -provenors in oil. UK Power Networks, the largest distribution networks in the United Kingdom, is testing to replace Traditional gas boilers with small data centers to the size of a heat pump.
They consist of a 500 mini -proven rack Raspberry Pi cm4 either Cm5 submerged in oil. The oil is heated as computers work, and the heat is then distributed by radiators and the water of the house.
A distributed cloud. These devices called “Heathub” are actually part of the Thermify distributed computing service. The company has completed a pilot test in Wales, and now hopes to climb the service to 100,000 facilities annually from here to 2030.
Thermify believes that low -income families will be interested in Heathub to relieve their economic burden, reducing the electricity bill and avoiding the Aerothermia installation. Thanks to cloud income, the company can offer a cheap and low alternative in carbon emissions.
How it works. Within each Heathub container, 500 Raspberry Pi modules work endlessly processing loads for the cloud service clients of Thermify. All this hardware is refrigerated by immersionwhat in this case has a double function, because it allows efficiently to capture the heat generated to use it as heating.
The residual heat is transferred to the central and hot water system of the house, as a substitute “plug and play” of the conventional gas boiler. As for how it affects the Internet connection: not to reduce customer bandwidth, each unit has a dedicated network connection.
Cheaper invoices. Why was someone to install an foreign data center at home? For the same reason that telephone antennas on the roofs of the buildings are installed: money. In this case, customers pay a fixed monthly fee of 5.60 pounds per month (about 6.60 euros), which reduces their bills by 40% without losing heating capacity.
Beyond individual savings, the proposal of Thermify and UKPN makes sense from the environmental point of view: use energy twice, taking advantage of a heat that traditional data centers usually waste. Perhaps the greatest obstacle that thermify is facing is the competition. Other companies Like the French Qarnot and The British Heata either Deep Green They are already working on similar projects, heating from water deposits to public pools.
Images | UKPN, Thermify
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