About Deep Green
Our story
Nearly a decade ago, our founder, Mark, and his friend, Chris, could be found in a shed, and then a warehouse, experimenting with some comparatively basic components - a server, a pump, a portable radiator, and a bath full of oil. They had a vision; to recapture the heat energy computing generated and reuse it.
A joint venture with a ‘common garden’ energy generation company followed. The early held-together-with-sticky-tape prototypes evolved into a beautiful product, a tiny data centre that could be mounted on a domestic hot water tank, and heat it. heatr is still running today.
Fast forward to 2020, and Mark embarked on a quest to scale the concept. What would happen if you immersed several High Performance GPUs in a tank, and connected them via heat exchanger to a swimming pool as a heat sync?
A series of Nvidia A100s were prepared for full immersion, and a useful proportion of the 50kW of the power they drew for computing was recaptured and redirected to heat the pool.
Deep Green was born.
Situate a ‘magic box’ of AI machines adjacent to a heat partner, and exchange hot water for plentiful cooling. Most people in the northern hemisphere got the idea; many of us have visceral memories of bobbing about in boracic public swimming pools, losing feelings in our extremities, either as kids, or more recently, waiting for them to tire.
Almost overnight, we became ‘the swimming pool’ guys, a perception exacerbated by our turning up dressed as lifeguards at important industry events.
In 2023, Octopus Energy Generation invested in deep Green, and we set about our mission to deploy 300MW of decarbonised data centres, distributed to the edge, in and near neighbourhoods across the UK&I, Europe and North America.
Fast forward to today and we find ourselves at the intersection of several seismic shifts in climate, cultural, energy, infrastructure, and technological systems.
We recognise that the more heat we generate, the more value we can generate, for everyone. We’re building data centres into energy centres, supplying energy to networks for homes, business, public spaces, and industry, perfectly spec’d for the high density workloads of high performance computing and AI.
The future of computing is ready, now.
Sustainability
We wish to live in a world where the exponential growth in compute is harnessed to fight climate change whilst benefiting local people, communities and businessness.
We want to live in a world where intelligent systems thinking - and action - is applied to our greatest challenges. There is a huge generational opportunity in the electrification of heat across homes, spaces, business and industry, especially as it’s in concert with the exponential demand of growth in computing infrastructure.
We have belief at Deep Green; waste is a verb, not a noun. Energy must be used responsibly, and its potential harnessed for the benefit of us all.
Going deeper, the way we design, build, operate, and behave is governed by three principles.
Reuse energy for the benefit of everyone
Reduce environmental impact wherever we can
Remove residual carbon with active resilient projects
About Octopus Energy Generation
Octopus Energy Transition Fund invests in energy projects and energy transition companies spanning 20 countries and 18 technologies. As one of the largest renewable energy investors in Europe, OEG manages more than 270 large-scale green energy projects with a combined capacity of 3.9 GW. That’s enough energy to power 2.6 million homes every year – and they are building more by the minute.
In December 2023, the fund made a £200 million investment in Deep Green, enabling us to rapidly scale on groundbreaking technology across the UK.
“To tackle the energy crisis head-on, we need innovative solutions to unusual problems. By using excess heat from data centres to slash energy bills for communities across the UK, Deep Green solves two problems with one solution. We’re looking forward to rapidly rolling this out and positively impacting even more people as we drive towards a cleaner, cheaper energy future.”
Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy Generation