We always enjoy catching up with our contacts, and this week one had an interesting suggestion: getting free heat by hosting a small data centre.
Data centres are the backbone of everything online. They contain many computers, and these computers generate lots of heat. It’s not a new idea to reuse the heat. It’s just that in the past, data centres have been large and the heat reuse has been for nearby buildings or neighbourhoods, forming a district heating scheme. At the moment, there’s a move towards smaller, more locally placed data centres – and some of them are only around 400 square feet (20×20, or 6×6 metres). The arrangements are a bit like having a mobile phone mast in a church tower. The company installs the data centre, paying all the costs including full decommissioning, but instead of paying rent, it heats the building for free.
We know that for venues with phone masts, they have often made a substantial contribution to keeping the building open and financially sustainable. Heating costs are a major part of a venue’s operating costs. This approach would also have advantages for buildings where space heating is justified by the occupancy or by the fabric requirements and where it’s possible to re-use or replace the current heat distribution to work for a cooler water supply, but there are other aspects of installing decarbonised heating that are challenging. Sometimes what blocks change is the need for a three phase electricity supply, where we’re told the cost of upgrading can be in the region of £30K. The data centre will need one, so hosting one gets rid of that cost in future even if the centre pulls out.
There are also lots of things to think about. Routing enough power to some buildings might make the installation costs high enough for the companies involved that they aren’t suitable, and it’s important for listed buildings (and many others!) that any changes be completely reversible. A data centre might well generate more heat than the building needs, so you might need to pull surrounding buildings into a larger district heating scheme. There will be costs for adapting the heating, but possibly also help to do this. And all of the arrangements can take time that you don’t have, depending on how much life is left in your current heating system.
Still, we think it’s an interesting suggestion for some community asset transfers and disused churches that have more space than the local community needs – something groups assess when they play our occupancy board game.
We only know of one venue that has considered this before but there is increasing support for thinking about your options, at least in Scotland. It’s another connection for us to make as we try to help groups have conversations with the right people about their future plans.
Main image: Florian Hirzinger – www.fh-ap.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.