The Anonymous Widower

Tiny Data Centre Used To Heat Public Swimming Pool

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.

This is the sub-heading.

The heat generated by a washing-machine-sized data centre is being used to heat a Devon public swimming pool

These three paragraphs outline the story.

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.

Note.

  1. Deep Green has a web site.
  2. thermify do something similar for homes.

I find both of these interesting applications.

March 14, 2023 Posted by | Computing, Energy | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Green Hydrogen Powered, Off-Grid Data Center-As-A-Service Is A World First

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Fuel News.

This is the first paragraph.

ECL has announced the world’s first off-grid Datacenter-as-a-Service, fully powered by green hydrogen, with 99.999% uptime at a much lower cost compared to traditional colocation data centers.

This paragraph gives details of an installation.

It runs with zero emissions at very low noise levels. The data center’s modularity combined with having no need to depend on local utilities means that it can be designed and delivered far more rapidly than other companies’ data centers. Instead of typical construction cycles that take between 18 – 24 month, ECL’s data centers take between six and nine months.

The product looks like a promising development.

I think this is the company’s web site.

January 27, 2023 Posted by | Computing, Energy, Hydrogen | , , | Leave a comment

Norwegian Company To Power Data Centres With Offshore Wind

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the sub-title.

Norwegian energy company Earth Wind & Power (EWP) is set to offtake up to 400MW of excess and pre-grid offshore wind power to supply electricity to data centre infrastructure in Northern Europe.

This sounds like a good idea.

Over the next few years, the UK will be ramping up our production of renewable energy.

Data centres could be an ideal way to make money from our excess energy.

November 23, 2022 Posted by | Computing, Energy | , , | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce Provide mtu Trigeneration Plant For Largest Data Centre In Romania

The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release on the Rolls Royce web site.

  • mtu Series 4000 gas generator sets to provide electricity, heat and cooling for ClusterPower’s Technology Campus in Craiova
    The completed campus will feature five data centers and provide a significant boost to the region’s global IT infrastructure competitiveness
  • Rolls-Royce, along with its distributor partner Knopf & Wallisch (K&W), has supplied three mtu customized and containerized combined cooling, heat and power plant (CCHP) trigeneration units to Romanian cloud service provider ClusterPower. They will be used for the efficient and sustainable energy supply at its new technology campus near the southern Romanian city of Craiova, where the IT company will open the largest data center in Romania.

The press release also says that trigeneration plants are hydrogen-ready.

The engines are gas engines, that can be converted to running on a mix of 25 % hydrogen and natural gas or eventually to pure hydrogen.

Conclusion

This would appear to be a neat way to sell the end customer an engine that can handle natural gas now and convert it over time to hydrogen.

January 14, 2022 Posted by | Computing, Energy, Hydrogen | , , , | Leave a comment

Caterpillar To Launch Demonstration Project Using Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technology For Backup Power At Microsoft Data Center

The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release on the Caterpillar web site.

This is the first two paragraphs.

Caterpillar Inc. today announced a three-year project through a collaboration with Microsoft and Ballard Power Systems to demonstrate a power system incorporating large-format hydrogen fuel cells to produce reliable and sustainable backup power for Microsoft data centers. The project is supported and partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under the H2@Scale initiative and backed by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

“At Caterpillar, we focus on supporting our customers with reliable, resilient and economical power solutions while achieving their climate-related goals,” said Jason Kaiser, vice president for Caterpillar’s Electric Power Division. “This hydrogen fuel cell demonstration project enables us to collaborate with industry leaders to take a large step toward commercially viable power solutions that also support our customers in making their operations more sustainable.”

It certainly looks like Caterpillar are turning to the use of hydrogen to keep their existing markets.

This press release explains the cooperation in a paragraph.

Caterpillar experts in advanced power technologies, controls and system integration are working alongside Microsoft experts in data center design and Ballard experts in fuel cell design to demonstrate a 1.5 MW backup power delivery and control system that would meet or exceed the expectations set by current diesel engine systems.

Elsewhere the press release says that Caterpillar aims to be carbon negative by 2030.

Conclusion

We will see lots of systems like this providing reliable and sustainable power systems for entities like airports, city centres, data centres, hospitals, ports, shopping malls and other large users of electricity.

December 25, 2021 Posted by | Computing, Energy, Hydrogen | , , , , | Leave a comment