UK couple’s garden shed datacenter heats home and cuts energy bills to £40 — clusters of 56 Raspberry Pis run real workloads, waste heat converted to heat home

A couple in the UK is using a small data center in their garden shed to heat their home, reducing energy bills to £40 a month by diverting server heat into a hot water system. The system, called a HeatHub, is part of a program by Thermify and the SHIELD project by UK Power Networks, aiming to help low-income households transition to net-zero. Each HeatHub unit contains up to 56 Raspberry Pi computers and could be used for running apps or analyzing data. Similar initiatives are being explored, like Deep Green's micro data centers in leisure centers, which use server heat to cover a significant portion of energy demands. Ofgem is preparing to regulate heat networks, potentially including reused server heat systems like these in the future.