British Gas has begun a trail using the excess heat from data centres to provide free hot water to people’s homes.

In a deal with sustainable cloud business heata, British Gas will harvest the heat from private data processing to directly heat hot water cylinders in the homes of ten employees.

Using a small compute unit attached to a hot water cylinder, heata’s system employs the small ‘virtual data centre,’ processing customer’s cloud computing data while providing free hot water to residents.

The tiny server will generate heat that is then used to heat the water in the cylinder, replacing the need for a gas boiler. The company also pays for the electricity the heata server uses in an effort to further drive down energy bills for residents.

According to heata, each unit can provide up to 4kWh of hot water a day, which is equivalent to the amount used in the average home each day. 

“We’ve created a solution that enables us to reuse the waste heat from cloud compute to provide free hot water for families in our communities,” Chris Jordan, co-founder of heata, said.

“Our reliance on data centres is only going to grow, as they are fundamental to training and running artificial intelligence.”

The trial will run for three months, and will take feedback from participating British Gas employees.

“This trial with British Gas is an exciting step and we hope other businesses will follow suit.

Recommended reading

• Will Data Centres Be Heating Your Home this Winter?
• Are Data Centres a Sustainable Heating Solution?
• Report: Can Waste Heat From Data Centres Be Harnessed Better?
• Placing Data Centres in Scotland Could Cut Carbon Significantly

“With a small change to where they place their data processing, businesses throughout the UK could be supporting their communities as a byproduct of their cloud computing.”

While the trail project may be small in scale, it shows a growing trend in solutions to the waste heat problem of data centres.

The concept of using data centre heat waste has great promise, a report from techUK predicted, though this would be impacted with problems like shifting energy demands and seasonal weather.