Converting “Digital” Heat From Waste to Commodity

Swiss-based cloud computing project DeepSquare teamed up with IWB Industrielle Werke Basel in a pilot project aimed at capturing and reusing the heat generated by cloud computing. This pilot project proves that providing heat to a residential building from the “waste” heat of ICT-Equipment is not a utopia, but an actual concept that works and can potentially be established as a standard in Smart Cities. The system developed in this pilot project is currently able to produce approximately 5 kW of heat supply to be used in a residential building in Basel – cutting the fossil fuel consumption of the 3-story townhouse, in an old building standard, by half. The collaboration between DeepSquare and IWB was born from the synergy of two visions. Computing (especially High-Performance Computing) is driving today’s technological and scientific advancements but has a significant environmental footprint. DeepSquare, as a result, has found a way to sustainably deliver cutting-edge compute without compromising on efficiency. The Innovation Team at IWB is constantly working on alternative and sustainable ways to provide heat and other forms of energy. At this moment, conventional data centers waste around 40% of power for cooling systems that in most cases treat heat as waste and release it into the atmosphere. This is just one example, that proves what DeepSquare and IWB are set to do, is disruptive and very much needed. Having a grid of powerful micro data centers spread across the city with heat reuse systems is a smart city model we need, especially knowing that data centers can communicate and aggregate computing power in a supercomputer style. Supercomputing Cluster located in residential building in Basel About DeepSquare is a Swiss-based project disrupting the cloud supply chain and changing how cloud computing is delivered and consumed. The project is building a decentralised cloud computing ecosystem focused on High Performance Computing. This means that companies, regardless of their size and compute needs, can access supercomputing resources to run their AI, rendering, render streaming, prototyping and simulations workloads in an easy and transparent manner. DeepSquare About IWB supplies people and companies with energy, water, mobility and telecommunications. In Switzerland, IWB is the first port of call for climate-friendly energy. In this way, the company contributes to a high quality of life and a healthy environment in the region of Basel and beyond. IWB Also published here.