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Swiss City Heats Public Pool with Computers

by Terrence O'Brien on April 4, 2008 at 02:09 PM



One of the byproducts of extreme computing power is heat. The problem is that all of this heat represents wasted energy, and instead of trying to recapture it, we use even more energy to dissipate that heat with air conditioning. But in the city of Uitikon, Switzerland, the local government, GIB Services, and IBM have come up with a rather unique solution.

The IBM-built data center run by GIB has been custom designed to directly transfer heat from the bunker full of refrigerator sized racks of computers and hard drives to a local public swimming pool. GIB is providing the heat for free, but the city did have to cover some of the initial equipment costs.

Its probably not the greenest solution to powering a massive data center, but it is certainly one of the more creative ways to reduce energy waste we've ever heard of.

From Engadget

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Tags: GIB services, GibServices, heat, IBM, pool, swimming, switzerland, uitikon

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