Local, accountable, and built to be questioned.
Entropy Energy Network exists to put wasted energy to work for Mansfield. This page explains who's behind it, how it's organized, and answers the questions we hear most.
Turn the heat from clean, flexible computing into community benefit.
Computing produces heat as a byproduct. Almost everywhere, that heat is thrown away. Entropy Energy Network was formed on a simple premise: in a town that already pays to heat its public buildings, that wasted energy is a resource hiding in plain sight.
By recovering heat from a small, behind-the-meter computing system and delivering it to public buildings, the project aims to do three things at once — lower the cost of heating spaces our taxes support, cut the emissions from burning fuel to make that heat, and add a flexible load that helps the regional grid stay reliable.
Why a 501(c)(4)?
Entropy Energy Network is being organized as a Massachusetts 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. That structure ties the project's primary purpose to community benefit rather than private profit, and it sets the expectation that the project is operated transparently and in the public interest. Any arrangement with a private computing operator is kept at arm's length and documented so the public benefit stays front and center.
Who's behind it
The project is being developed by Jim Carlson, a Mansfield resident, with the goal of keeping both the benefits and the accountability local. It is intended to move forward through Mansfield's public boards and the same review that governs other municipal energy decisions.
Straight answers.
A small, sealed bank of computing equipment — closer in footprint to a boiler room than to any industrial facility. Like any computer, it converts the electricity it uses into heat. Instead of venting that warmth outside, the equipment is immersion-cooled and the heat is captured as hot water and delivered to the building. It exists to make useful heat; the computing is the means.
The heat-delivery side uses conventional hydronic plumbing installed to Massachusetts building, electrical, plumbing/gas, mechanical, and fire codes. It is permitted and inspected by the town's own officials before it can operate. There is no combustion on the heating side.
It stays in place and remains the always-available default. Recovered heat supplements it. If the computing system is ever offline, the building heats exactly as it does today — so the upgrade never creates a single point of failure.
The aim is for a public building to buy delivered heat at a rate below its avoided fuel cost — so recovered heat costs less than the gas or oil it displaces. The equipment is owned by the project, not the town, so there's no capital outlay on the municipal side. Final rates and savings are set in the heat-purchase agreement.
It's designed to do the opposite. The load is curtailable — it can power down within seconds when the grid is stressed and resume when conditions ease. That lets it avoid the region's coincident peaks and behave as a demand-response resource rather than a strain. See the Grid & Reliability page.
The community entity (organizing as a 501(c)(4)) and the computing operator are separate parties. The operator pays to host its load and assigns the resulting heat to the community entity at arm's-length, fair-market terms that are documented for audit. The project is designed to comply with Massachusetts conflict-of-interest law (G.L. c.268A) and procurement law (G.L. c.30B).
It goes through Mansfield's public process: siting review, an energy-procurement pathway under G.L. c.30B, approvals by the appropriate boards at open meetings, and code permits inspected by the town. The Officials page lays out the full sequence.
Reach out through the Contact page to ask a question, request a briefing, or get the underlying documents. The project is meant to be discussed in public, early and often.
Still have a question?
If it's not answered here, we want to hear it — and we'll add good questions to this page.