British Gas has partnered with Heata to pilot a cloud-based platform across the UK, with servers hosted in homes. Each server is connected to a home heating system that stores heat as the server operates.
Each server can provide up to 4 kWh per day, which in theory could save up to £340/year on gas or electricity bills. The electricity consumed by the server is paid for by Heata itself. The trial will run for three months, during which time 10 “digital boilers” will be installed in the homes of British Gas employees, with the resources being rented out to Heata customers.
The companies are looking to share ideas and knowledge to bring the technology to the masses. Heata previously partnered with Civo on a similar pilot programme to heat homes in the UK in 2023. There are other similar projects in the works. Deep Green is using GPU servers to heat swimming pools in Exmouth and Yorkshire. Civo is also a partner of Deep Green.
Image source: Heata
In 2022, Qarnot delighted customers with a new generation of QB heating devices, created in collaboration with ITRenew. These systems use OCP servers that previously operated in hyperscaler data centers. Later, the company used servers for cooking as an experiment. Perhaps the approach of placing computing power in close proximity to heat consumers will be more effective than attempts to connect data centers to central heating systems.