From Ceramics to Compute: Potbank’s Next Chapter Begins
The above image shows a modular data centre at the University of Bristol. This modular approach provides a quick delivery approach and is easily expandable. The proposed unit at Spode will be installed within the existing 4A warehouse.
A Legacy of Making, A Future of Compute
Spode Works is a landmark of British industrial history. Founded in the 1700s, it became synonymous with fine ceramics exported worldwide. Today, Potbank’s next chapter could be about exporting something new: a blueprint for locally rooted, sovereign AI infrastructure that serves communities, not just global technology giants.
Why Local AI Infrastructure Could Matter More Than Ever
AI is reshaping every sector—from manufacturing and healthcare to creative industries and logistics. Yet, the infrastructure powering these advances is often centralized and controlled by large, foreign-owned data center giants. The recent AWS outage serves as a stark reminder of just how vulnerable this model can be; when a single hyperscale provider experiences a failure, it can disrupt countless businesses and critical services across the internet, with impacts felt far beyond the UK’s borders. Such incidents expose the risks of over-reliance on offshore, monolithic infrastructure that is disconnected from local needs and control. In light of these vulnerabilities, the UK may need to secure sovereign AI and data resources in ways that empower and protect its regions, ensuring they benefit directly from resilient, community-rooted digital infrastructure.
Even within the UK, the dominant model has been hyperscale: massive, centralised data centres that concentrate power and ownership. But this model presents limitations. It is vulnerable to attack, difficult to integrate with local energy systems, and often disconnected from the communities it serves.
Waste heat is the dirty secret of these hyperscale data centres. Up to 90% of their total power consumption can be dedicated to cooling rather than computing. This means enormous amounts of energy are used just to move heat away from servers—yet most of that heat dissipates into the environment, untapped and wasted. The result: high operational costs and a significant environmental footprint.
A Different Model: Small, Beautiful, Distributed
The proposed Potbank–GreenWeaver AI data centre pilot would adopt a distributed, modular, and circular approach. It would aim to recycle waste heat into the local community and utilise renewable energy sources being developed on-site and nearby. The design intends to leverage existing energy and fibre infrastructure while providing “edge computing” capacity near users, heat demand, and areas of potential use.
Technical Foundations: Solar-to-Data, Liquid Cooling, and Circular Heat
Subject to planning approval, the initial pilot would aim to deliver up to 750kW of IT load, with a target of sourcing at least 50% of peak daytime power directly from solar. This would be achieved through a “solar-to-data” architecture, where direct current (DC) from rooftop solar panels feeds straight into the data centre racks—bypassing batteries and local inverters, reducing capital costs and eliminating conversion losses.
Servers would be cooled using liquid immersion technology, where they are submerged in thermally conductive fluid. This method could dramatically improve thermal efficiency, reduce mechanical cooling needs, and enable heat capture at lower temperatures—typically around 40–50°C.
Captured heat would be transferred via rear-door heat exchangers into specially designed heating systems at Potbank and nearby buildings—such as underfloor heating and low-grade radiators. For higher-temperature legacy systems and, potentially, integration with Stoke’s emerging district heating network, the heat could be stepped up to 80–99°C using existing biomass boilers, the DHN when it arrives and advanced heat pumps.
Scaling with the Grid and Community
Local power grid capacity has already been identified for the pilot phase and beyond. Future scaling would align with grid upgrades and renewable expansion.
As more buildings join the heat network, solar energy could be harvested from their rooftops and returned via shared trenching—where heat pipes and DC solar cabling run side by side. This “solar return” strategy would significantly reduce microgrid development costs and create a distributed energy ecosystem that grows with the community.
Several Potbank buildings in the next phase of development are designed to be waste heat reuse–ready, designed to house the next wave of Createch businesses attracted by the site’s unique energy and compute offering. Discussions are already underway with neighbouring buildings for this circular “heat-for-solar merry-go-round.”
Security: A Strategic Advantage
In today’s geopolitical climate, security is paramount. Hyperscale data centres are easy targets—visible from satellites, reliant on centralised grid and fibre links, and vulnerable to disruption. In contrast, distributed, locally embedded facilities like Potbank’s proposed pilot would be harder to pinpoint, harder to attack, and offer failover and redundancy across multiple nodes.
Hyperscale developments take many years to bring forward, smaller scale local facilities can be brought forward in modular form utilizing local resources and energy. Potbank’s proposed data centre will arrive in modular form and be driven into the existing warehouse and could, if planning permits, be live in 2026.
This model wouldn’t just decentralise compute—it would decentralise risk, harvest local energy potential without overwhelming the local grid and accelerate delivery.
Edge AI: Powering Local Innovation
Potbank’s local edge AI capacity could empower Stoke’s Createch cluster with real-time, low-latency computing for content production, design, and manufacturing. Innovators, educators and researchers would gain doorstep access to high-performance infrastructure—enabling new products, advanced teaching environments and services without relying on distant cloud providers.
This is about access and agency. Local control could mean local benefit—jobs, startups, inward investment, and a clear pathway for skills development through Stoke’s universities and colleges.
Local authorities, universities and businesses can have local options beyond a cloud access to hyperscale facility they have no physical access to, high latency in accessing and which otherwise just drains value from the local community.
City Council Vision: Backed by Strategy
Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Energy Strategy 2023–2033 prioritises district heating, solar PV, and circular energy systems. Potbank’s pilot could align directly with this strategy, offering a real-world test bed for reducing carbon emissions, cutting energy costs, and creating green economic opportunities.
Ready to Build: Simple, Scalable, Sovereign
Everything needed to deliver the pilot at Potbank appears to be in place—fibre, grid, solar potential, heating infrastructure, upcoming developments at Spode, and stakeholder support.
Once planning permission is granted, the initial pilot build process is expected to be straightforward. The data centre and heating components would arrive in modular structures, ready to be carefully delivered inside Potbank’s warehouse spaces. If all goes well, the project could be operational in 2026, with the ability to scale rapidly as the pilot ramps up to full operation and the City’s Heat Networks expands to realise the potential across the City.