"It's a good invention": these data centers which participate in heating buildings

Margaux Fodéré, edited by Alexandre Dalifard 06:19, January 31, 2023

While the temperatures are still cold, the French are still tempted to turn up the heating at home, at the risk of paying more.

Faced with this, the French company Qarnot Computing uses the power of computers to heat buildings in order to save energy and reduce the bill.

Data centers are directly located on sites that need to be heated.

A very special boiler: a black box one meter high, and inside, 24 servers stacked on top of each other.

With the other boiler next to it, these two machines provide domestic hot water for the building, explains Quentin Laurens, spokesperson for Qarnot.

"By carrying out calculations for finance, for research, these servers release heat that we will use to produce hot showers for the accommodation in this social residence."

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65% energy saving

This device makes it possible to achieve 65% energy savings while being less expensive.

“We are going to reduce the bill for tenants by producing free hot water”, underlines Quentin Laurens.

Among the residents, Céline, 20, had no idea what was heating the water in her shower.

"I think it's the new generation, it's a good invention," she rejoices.

And the system seems so effective that the town hall would even like to develop it to heat the city's swimming pools, says Jacques Baudrier, assistant for the ecological transition of the building.

"Our swimming pools still operate on gas or electric heating. So why not, digital boilers."

The hunt for savings is on: in France, 264 data centers could be used in the same way.