Start-up Deep Green deployed a washing-machine-sized data center at the Exmouth Leisure Centre to repurpose waste heat for pool heating. The system uses computers submerged in mineral oil to capture thermal energy, which then flows through a heat exchanger to maintain pool temperatures around 30C. This setup covers heating needs 60% of the time.

Deep Green provides the hardware free of charge and refunds the facility's electricity costs. The company generates revenue by selling the computing power to clients for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. This architectural choice converts a cooling liability into a heating asset, bypassing the expensive cooling infrastructure typically required for large-scale server farms.

Seven other pools in England have signed up for the scheme. By decentralizing compute and placing small-scale nodes where thermal demand is high, the model addresses the energy inefficiency of traditional data centers that often spend millions on cooling. This approach transforms a server rack into a digital boiler to lower operational overhead for public utilities.