Excess Energy from AI Servers Is Heating the Pool at the 2024 Olympic Games — Here's How It might be hot on the streets of Paris, but the swimming pool still needs to be heated.
By Emily Rella Edited by Melissa Malamut
Key Takeaways
- The pool at the Olympics Aquatics Center is being partially heated by excess energy emitted from AI data centers.
- Excess heat from a training site called PA10 is being piped to a French energy system that's then converted into heat for the pool and homes in the area.
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Though temps in Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games may be sweltering, the pool where the Olympic swimmers, divers, and water polo players compete still needs to be heated. But the Paris Games isn't heating the water in a traditional way — it's using excess heat from AI servers to warm the pool.
In Saint-Denis, France, the American data company, Equinix, operates a mass AI training site called PA10. AI data centers are known to emit mass quantities of heat and energy due to the many servers needed to train AI language models for popular applications like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta's Llama.
Related: How Much Do Olympic Athletes Earn When They Medal in Paris?
In the process of firing up the servers, PA10 is filled with excess heat and energy, which is then funneled into pipes sent to a local energy system run by Equinix, which sends the heat to the Olympics Aquatics Center to help warm up the pool.
The excess energy is also sent to roughly 600 homes in the Saint-Denis neighborhood. Equinix told Wired that it expects the center to produce enough energy to heat 1,000 homes when it reaches full capacity.
Related: Google Pulls Olympics Gemini AI Commercial After Criticism
It's a mutually beneficial system as Equinix can spend less money and energy on cooling PA10 since the excess heat is being exported elsewhere.
The 2024 Olympic Games are set to conclude on August 11.
