It’s no news that crypto mining takes a lot of energy. Bitcoin alone is estimated to consume 127 terawatt hours per year. If Bitcoin were a country, it would come in about the same the 32nd largest consumer of electricity in the world. Much of this energy is generated as heat, which must be cooled back in the data centers. So wouldn’t it be great if you could do something with all that excess heat? This is the basic idea behind Focuswhich takes a miner, puts it in a radiator on your wall and uses the excess heat from mining for coins to heat your house.
The company’s unique home heater uses recycled data center chips to generate heat, making it a smart, eco-friendly solution for modern homes.
“Three quarters of heating is still based on fossil fuel heating. And around the world, governments are banning fossil fuel heating and pushing for electric heating. Heat pumps are considered the only real option. But the problem is that they are expensive. They are difficult to install. And they’re noisy, and they’re actually not very pretty to look at. And so, what we’ve done is we’ve replaced the traditional heater with a computer,” explains Antoine Cossart, CEO and founder of Hestiia, speaking to TechCrunch at CES 2024.
The system aims to match the variable supply of renewable energy with demand. The smart system can preheat the home before the homeowner arrives, turn off when an energy-consuming appliance like the oven is in use, and then come back on after the appliance is turned off. The basic idea is that it ensures that houses stay at a comfortable temperature at home, but it also helps stabilize the grid.
Hestiia’s heaters are powered by recycled ASIC chips, collected from data centers that are being upgraded to newer models. These chips are given new life on a special board, producing heat that is then transferred to the house. The use of conductive layers and heat pipes ensures efficient heat transfer, making the most of the radiated warmth.
One of the radiators inside the heater. Image Credits: Focus
The front panel of the radiator is made of material based on recycled resin and plastics. The dual-core heating system provides both convective and radiant heating and the system is controlled via an app, which allows the user to set the desired temperature. As the temperature rises, more chips are used to provide the necessary heat.
Hestiia’s innovative heating system also has the potential for distributed data processing. This means the heaters could also process data for services like SETI or blockchain applications, turning the heaters into distributed computing centers.
With data centers consuming huge amounts of electricity and generating heat that is often wasted, Hestiia’s approach offers a sustainable solution.
“Then, as AI continues to grow and consume more electricity and data centers and pump more and more heat into the atmosphere, we want to be able to offer distributed AI computing power as well,” says Cossart. “We’d rather reuse waste heat and do something smart with it, rather than think of it as waste.”
The company is in beta testing, with a handful of products already out for testing. Hestiia plans to start shipments next month and has already presold 230 units, aiming to sell 1,000-2,000 units this year, mostly in France.
Hestiia heaters look very cool. Image Credits: Focus.
I’ve always thought blockchains are a lot of hot air, to be honest with you, and it seems like a pretty logical end stage of technology to see it being used to generate literal hot air — but at least this time it’s being used for something useful. Even if blockchains end up falling out of popularity, heaters will remain relevant for a while: There seems to be an endless need for computing power.
The biggest challenge I see with this company is that while it makes sense right now, computing power continues to accelerate rapidly. Heat pumps in homes have a life expectancy of 15-20 years and it is hard to imagine that the Hestiia heaters in use today will be able to contribute meaningfully to computationally heavy tasks 15 years from now. Example: Can you think of a single computer from 2009 that is still in use and contributing in any meaningful way to today’s AI computing needs?
However, it is very exciting to see startups thinking differently about the intersection of computing and climate change.
The startup is in the process of building a bridge approx €1 million, after an earlier increase of €5 million a few years ago.
