Struggling to heat your home? How about 500 Raspberry Pi units?
(2025/10/03)
- Reference: 1759482380
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/10/03/thermify_heathub_raspberry_pi/
- Source link:
Reusing heat from servers has gained momentum recent years, but UK Power Networks (UKPN) is taking an unusual approach: installing mini datacenters powered by Raspberry Pi hardware in customers homes to provide heating for families struggling with energy costs.
UKPN, which manages the "last mile" of cables and substations delivering electricity from the National Grid to customers in the South East of England, is piloting the project as part of its SHIELD (Smart Heat and Intelligent Energy in Low-income Districts) program.
This will equip participating households with solar and battery systems, while one-third will also receive the "HeatHub" system - a compact datacenter roughly the size of a large heat pump that replaces traditional gas boilers.
[1]
This phase of the project will collect data to support the scaling up of SHIELD, with UKPN aiming to deploy 100,000 systems a year by 2030.
[2]
[3]
HeatHub is designed and operated by a firm called [4]Thermify , which uses the unit to process containerized workloads for business customers of its distributed cloud service.
[5]
Terry Bridges, tenant at Eastlight Community Homes in the East of England, next to the HeatHub that harvests waste heat from server processing
Thermify told us that the processing power inside each HeatHub is provided by a cluster of 500 Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, either the [6]CM4 or [7]CM5 . The whole kit is submerged in oil, and the heat is transferred to the domestic central heating and hot water systems, making it a "plug and play" replacement for a gas boiler. The unit in its [8]video promo is much smaller than the one in the image for this article.
A dedicated network connection at each site in being installed, so householders don't have to worry about HeatHub eating all their broadband bandwidth, the company told us.
[9]Datacenter biz wants to turn heat and carbon waste into biomass for sale
[10]Google's €1B Finnish datacenter expansion to heat the local community
[11]Plans to heat districts with datacenters may prove too hot to handle
[12]Deep Green gets £200M from power supplier to scale waste heat reuse
UKPN is working with Power Circle Projects, housing association Eastlight Community Homes, and Essex Community Energy on a rollout of the SHIELD low-carbon technologies, as well as a new social heating tariff across select housing estates in the East and South East of England.
Low-income tenants will pay a monthly standing charge of £5.60 ($7.52), according to UKPN, and SHIELD is estimated help participating tenants reduce their energy bills by 20 to 40 percent.
Charlie Edgar, overseeing the SHIELD work on behalf of Eastlight Community Homes, said in a statement: "The pilot results for this innovative solution are very encouraging and we're excited to see it being trialed in hundreds more homes.
[13]
"We can see the potential to provide reliable heating at a predictable low cost, empowering families to maintain a comfortable living environment without the stress of rising energy bills."
This isn't the first project of this kind. Heata, which started as a project within UK energy company British Gas, [14]fits servers onto domestic hot water tanks to cut energy bills for homeowners. In this case, heat is generated by running workloads provided by cloud operator Civo.
Another British firm called [15]Deep Green started up a couple of years ago, providing heat to businesses and public swimming pools from mini datacenters deployed on-site. ®
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[4] https://thermify.cloud/
[5] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/10/02/thermifyheathub.jpg
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/19/pi_compute_module_4/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/27/raspberry_pi_compute_module_5/
[8] https://player.vimeo.com/video/729546355?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&dnt=1?dnt=1&app_id=122963
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/datacenter_waste_heat_trial/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/21/google_dc_finland_heating/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/28/datacenter_heat_reuse_challenges/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/16/deep_green_gets_200m_from/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aN-etMSfIPi2ffOCDIWHMwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/heata_offers_free_hot_water/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/cloud_startup_waste_heat_dcs/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
UKPN, which manages the "last mile" of cables and substations delivering electricity from the National Grid to customers in the South East of England, is piloting the project as part of its SHIELD (Smart Heat and Intelligent Energy in Low-income Districts) program.
This will equip participating households with solar and battery systems, while one-third will also receive the "HeatHub" system - a compact datacenter roughly the size of a large heat pump that replaces traditional gas boilers.
[1]
This phase of the project will collect data to support the scaling up of SHIELD, with UKPN aiming to deploy 100,000 systems a year by 2030.
[2]
[3]
HeatHub is designed and operated by a firm called [4]Thermify , which uses the unit to process containerized workloads for business customers of its distributed cloud service.
[5]
Terry Bridges, tenant at Eastlight Community Homes in the East of England, next to the HeatHub that harvests waste heat from server processing
Thermify told us that the processing power inside each HeatHub is provided by a cluster of 500 Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, either the [6]CM4 or [7]CM5 . The whole kit is submerged in oil, and the heat is transferred to the domestic central heating and hot water systems, making it a "plug and play" replacement for a gas boiler. The unit in its [8]video promo is much smaller than the one in the image for this article.
A dedicated network connection at each site in being installed, so householders don't have to worry about HeatHub eating all their broadband bandwidth, the company told us.
[9]Datacenter biz wants to turn heat and carbon waste into biomass for sale
[10]Google's €1B Finnish datacenter expansion to heat the local community
[11]Plans to heat districts with datacenters may prove too hot to handle
[12]Deep Green gets £200M from power supplier to scale waste heat reuse
UKPN is working with Power Circle Projects, housing association Eastlight Community Homes, and Essex Community Energy on a rollout of the SHIELD low-carbon technologies, as well as a new social heating tariff across select housing estates in the East and South East of England.
Low-income tenants will pay a monthly standing charge of £5.60 ($7.52), according to UKPN, and SHIELD is estimated help participating tenants reduce their energy bills by 20 to 40 percent.
Charlie Edgar, overseeing the SHIELD work on behalf of Eastlight Community Homes, said in a statement: "The pilot results for this innovative solution are very encouraging and we're excited to see it being trialed in hundreds more homes.
[13]
"We can see the potential to provide reliable heating at a predictable low cost, empowering families to maintain a comfortable living environment without the stress of rising energy bills."
This isn't the first project of this kind. Heata, which started as a project within UK energy company British Gas, [14]fits servers onto domestic hot water tanks to cut energy bills for homeowners. In this case, heat is generated by running workloads provided by cloud operator Civo.
Another British firm called [15]Deep Green started up a couple of years ago, providing heat to businesses and public swimming pools from mini datacenters deployed on-site. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aN-etMSfIPi2ffOCDIWHMwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aN-etMSfIPi2ffOCDIWHMwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aN-etMSfIPi2ffOCDIWHMwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://thermify.cloud/
[5] https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/10/02/thermifyheathub.jpg
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/19/pi_compute_module_4/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/27/raspberry_pi_compute_module_5/
[8] https://player.vimeo.com/video/729546355?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&dnt=1?dnt=1&app_id=122963
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/datacenter_waste_heat_trial/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/21/google_dc_finland_heating/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/28/datacenter_heat_reuse_challenges/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/16/deep_green_gets_200m_from/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aN-etMSfIPi2ffOCDIWHMwAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/heata_offers_free_hot_water/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/cloud_startup_waste_heat_dcs/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Interesting idea
Mishak
But a couple of questions:
1) Where does the heat go if it's not needed? I'm guessing there must be some way to reject it to the environment.
2) How hot does it make the water? I'm guessing not very, as the aim is to keep the servers reasonably cool.
Re: Interesting idea
RSW
This was also my thoughts, there must be a thermal store somewhere as the demand for both heating and compute would never be at the same time. We have solar so still have to have a hot water tank which is used to store as heat the excess power generated. This system can't replace a standard combi boiler
Less cynical than an older offering[1]
Can anyone help with a reference for the following (early morning Duckducking the web only leads me back to what TFA already mentions)
IIRC there was (is?) a US company that was pushing a similar idea - heat your home from a server - except that it was a more calculated approach: they sold you the kit outright, you connected it to your power and broadband then made money by selling the compute back to company "at market rates". So only for the already rich (beautiful homes used to illustrate the system in use, no painted brick utilty room) and the "calculated" part was, of course, that the company had absolutely no skin in the game at all once they'd shipped the package off.
Anyway, fingers crossed that this new scheme pans out. At least the server farms are using well-known components: if Thermify does quietly vanish away then we can always draft Jeff Geerling to get the boxes running and talking to each other again.
[1] unless I'm suffering from LLM-style hallucinations - maybe I'll step out of the shower and find that it was all a terrible dream