Octopus Energy invests £200m in datacentre heat reuse startup Deep Green

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Utility provider Octopus Energy has committed to investing £200m in datacentre heat reuse startup Deep Green to help the company scale

Caroline Donnelly,
Senior Editor, UK

Published: 15 Jan 2024 17:00

Heat reuse-focused datacentre compute provider Deep Green has secured £200m in investment from Octopus Energy’s generation arm, which will be used to help the UK-based startup scale.

Deep Green specialises in the development and deployment of small-scale, edge-style datacentres and the heat they generate is then reused by businesses in a variety of different ways.

One of the company’s most high-profile deployments, which garnered national press coverage, involved the deployment of one of its mini-, heat-reusing datacentres at a leisure centre in Exmouth, Devon, with the organisation projecting the setup would save it around £20,000 a year in energy costs.

With the financial backing of Octopus Energy’s generation arm, the company said it is now in a position to rapidly scale its technology, which is already being used by York University and Stevenage-based web hosting company Civo, across the UK.

Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy Generation, said the company was compelled to invest in Deep Green because of the potential for the company’s technology to save consumers money.

“To tackle the energy crisis head-on, we need innovative solutions to unusual problems. By using excess heat from datacentres to slash energy bills for communities across the UK, Deep Green solves two problems with one solution,” said North-Bond.

“We’re looking forward to rapidly rolling this out and positively impacting even more people as we drive towards a cleaner, cheaper energy future.”

Mark Bjornsgaard, founder and CEO of Deep Green, said the investment will help the company achieve the next phase of its growth. “Placing datacentres within the fabric of society transforms the waste heat they produce into a valuable resource that benefits communities,” he said.

“The datacentre sector is rightly facing scrutiny about its growing energy demand and associated carbon emissions. Our datacentres are highly energy efficient and support local communities with free heat.”

Calls for UK-based datacentre operators to make better use of the heat their facilities produce have been growing for years, but – as a concept – it is one that has been more broadly embraced in the Nordic countries.

To this point, Computer Weekly has reported on a number of different datacentre heat reuse projects in the Nordic countries whereby the heat generated by server farms is used in district heating schemes, in urban farming projects and in manufacturing processes.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the government has previously flagged reusing the waste heat generated by datacentres to warm homes and businesses as a concept that could help it achieve its net-zero goals.

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