Sean Day

The Heat generated by a washing-machine-sized data centre is being used to Heat a Devon public Swimming Pool .

The Computers inside The white box are surrounded by oil to capture The Heat - Enough to Heat The Pool to about 30C 60% of The Time , saving Exmouth Leisure Centre thousands of pounds.

The data centre is provided to The council-run centre free of charge.

Start-up Deep Green charges clients to use its computing power for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning .

Founder Mark Bjornsgaard said The Company would also refund The leisure centre's electricity costs for running The " digital boiler" - and seven other England pools had signed up to The scheme.

The concept, developed over five years, is relatively Straight Forward - The hot oil is pumped into a Heat exchanger to warm The Water in The Pool .

Sean Day , who runs The leisure centre, said he had been expecting its energy bills to rise by £100,000 this year.

" The partnership has really helped us reduce The costs of what has been astronomical over The Last 12 Months - our energy prices and gas prices have gone through The Roof , " He Said .

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

Swim England chief executive Jane Nickerson said it was good to see pools " embracing innovative solutions".

Last Summer , Bbc News revealed 65 swimming pools had closed since 2019, with rising energy costs cited as a significant reason.

Cambridge University professor of engineering and The Environment Dr Julian Allwood said: " If it's a sensible idea and it saves The leisure centre some money, then Why Not ? " adding data centres on The whole used less energy than previously reported.

But large ones can require billions of gallons of Water and millions of pounds to Keep Cool .

Some are even built under Water - or in caves or very cold parts of The World .

And in Danish and Swedish cities, huge data centres power thousands of homes.

" Data centres have got a huge problem with Heat , " Mr Bjornsgaard said.

" A lot of The Money that it costs to run a data centre is is taken up in in getting rid of The Heat .

" And So What we've done is taken a very small bit of a data centre to where The Heat is useful and required. "

Source of news: bbc.com