Surrey: Homes get free hot water from computer heat

Irfan Walji gets his water heated for free thanks to the innovative new technology

A system which provides free hot water to homes, made using waste heat from computer processing, is being trialled.

The firm Heata, based in Godalming, Surrey, matched companies who were heavily reliant on computers with householders happy to have servers fitted next to their hot water tanks.

Heat generated by the servers that would otherwise be wasted into the air warms the water in the host tanks.

Any extra electricity required for the servers is paid for by Heata.

So far 10 companies have signed up, and about 80 homes host their servers.

Nick Homer, managing director of F10 Studios in Hove, East Sussex, said: "The information gets packaged up from this end and sent through the WiFi in the host's home."

The computer servers of Nick Homer's company provide free heat for householders

Irfan Walji who had one of the servers fitted to his home in Horley, Surrey, six months ago, said: "We've generated over ten tonnes of hot water, which is about 90 days of average use of hot water and about 226 showers.

"At the moment it's in a trial, so it's running at about 50% of an average home's use of hot water. I'm told it can go up to 80%."

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Heata said there will soon be 100 homes involved.

The company's co-founder Mike Paisley said: "With the massive increase in demand for processing - and AI will increase that hugely over the coming years - it could support a huge amount of heat in society."

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