The swimming pool warmed by hot computers

A swimming pool in Devon is being warmed up by the extra heat created from computers.

Scientists have surrounded computers in a data centre with a kind of oil which is warmed up by the heat the computers give off.

That's then used to then used to heat the water in a leisure centre pool. The pool's manager says it's been "awesome" working on the idea.

Although there is oil involved, it's being warmed up, not burned for energy so the method is considered more environmentally friendly.

It's saving the swimming pool thousands of pounds on energy costs, and the data centre doesn't have to spend as much money cooling its computers either.

Here's how it works.

What is a data-centre?

The computer is surrounded by oil which absorbs the heat and is pumped away to heat the swimming pool

When you upload something to social media, stream a video or search for something online it is often said to be saved in the cloud.

But the cloud isn't floating in the sky, it's just a name for something saved on a real-life very powerful computer which can be accessed on the internet from anywhere.

These computers are usually grouped in data centres - and they use a lot of power and generate a lot of heat.

Why do data centres use so much energy?

The Cloud looks like this - banks of computer servers in a data centre

Data centres use so much energy because there's so much on the internet and we want access it quickly.

The more there is on there, and the quicker we get the content, the more computing power is needed, which means they start getting warm.

It's just like when you try playing a new game on a phone or tablet and notice it getting hot.

Usually companies running data centres spend lots of money on air conditioning and other cooling methods to make sure the computers don't get too hot and crash.

But scientists are coming up with other clever ways to use that heat, rather than just waste it.

Swimming pools closing because of energy costs

Mark Bjornsgaard says his scheme can save public swimming pools thousands of pounds

The idea to heat the swimming pool water with the data centre comes after worries about the rising cost of keeping swimming pools warm.

65 different pools across the UK have closed since 2019 because of how expensive bills are.

Sean Day, who manages the Devon pool now being heated by the data centre, says their bills had been expected to rise to £100,000 per year.

"Looking at different ways of how we can save money as an organisation has been awesome," he says.

A number of other swimming pools are now interested in using the method to save money on their heating.

Data centres heating cities

Stockholm in Sweden is starting to use data centres to help warm homes

The idea to use the heat from data centres to warm up other things, isn't totally new.

In Sweden work is being done to use the heat from massive data centres there to provide heat for nearly one million homes.

Cold water is pumped around into the data centre, which helps to cool the computers.

As that water heats up, it's then pumped back out into the local heating companies who distribute the hot water.

Allowing us to accessing the internet can mean huge power demands

Although this is being seen as a great way to use up the heat caused by data centres, some scientists say we need to tackle the issue of storing so much information on the internet - and the power that needs.

This kind of computer power needs huge amounts of energy to drive it which isn't always made in the most renewable or sustainable way and can contribute to climate change.

Professor Gordon Blair, an Environmental Data Scientist at Lancaster University, says there's a "danger that we just keep everything. Absolutely everything is stored these days on the off chance it might be useful..."

"This data is just building up and building up," he says, "We can't just keep doing this forever - we know where it's heading and it's not good."