5 ms·

I know it's a joke but running a heat pump will be two to three times more efficient a heating your space.

shagie 4y ago
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171013-where-data-centres-store-info---and-heat-homes https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171013-where-data-centr... > ... > Stockholm Data Parks is expecting to generate enough heat to warm 2,500 residential apartments by 2018, but the long term goal is to meet 10% of the entire heating need of Stockholm by 2035. > According to Data Centres By Sweden – which is launching Stockholm-like projects across the country – only 10 MW of energy is needed to heat 20,000 modern residential apartments. The typical Facebook data centre, for example, uses 120 MW. > One of the main incentives for companies to join the programme in Stockholm is financial – they get to sell their waste heat. Fortum also provides free cold water for their cooling.
- alex_duf 4y ago
  oh I get that, computing creates heat and we should totally re-use it. But where CPU heat is 1 kWh of electricity = 1kWh of heat, a heat pump will have 1 kWh of electricity = 3 kWh of heat, because it's "sucking" 2kWh of heat from a medium (air, water, ground whatever) and literally making it colder. Now OP was suggesting increasing the voltage of their computer as a way to generate more heat and "save" on heating, but it wouldn't be more economical than say, heat your home with a toaster (1 kWh electricity = 1kWh heat). It works, it's just not very efficient. So I was saying, assuming you have a heat pump, better send that little bit extra energy to the heat pump than increase the voltage of your CPU. (And yes that was tongue in cheek before anyone think I'm serious for a second) But yeah, if you have computer that produce heat, and you're having to get rid of that heat that's waste and ideally it should be used somewhere else.
winter_blue 4y ago
I'm more curious on how do Intel CPUs compare to space heaters? (I mean in comparison to the regular electric resistance heaters.) Heat pumps are ultra-efficient but even the cheapest heat pumps cost a few thousand dollars (and require expert installation – so they're not suitable if you're renting, for example).
- ilyt 4y ago
  > I'm more curious on how do Intel CPUs compare to space heaters? (I mean in comparison to the regular electric resistance heaters.) Near-exactly same 100% efficiency of turning power to heat.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  For $3, you can buy a rather inefficient thermoelectric heat pump[1]. It is still more efficient than a space heater though. Any old refrigerator is also a fairly good DIY heat pump - and if you design it right, you can easily get a COP of 4+. Obviously a typical refrigerator will only do about 600 BTU/h. But thats still plenty for super insulated rooms. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001621702934.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001621702934.html?
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Well you can get a fan with 1500 Watts of heat for $18 at Walmart, so the cost per watt is crazy low for these kinds of heaters, $0.012/Watt. Or just, like, steel wire of the right length shoved into an electrical outlet (not much different in principle, maybe a couple cents worth of steel wire…). Baseboard space heaters are like $90 for 1500Watts, or $0.06/Watt. A consumer GPU is like $2.80/Watt. Now the cost of the electricity itself, if converted to a capital cost equivalent, is like $10/Watt for residential 24/7/365 electricity in much of the US. An air source heat pump like a mini split costs like $900 for 3600 Watts of heat (typical weird units like 12,000 BTU per hour but usually they omit the “per hour” part because marketing people hate clarity LOL), so just $0.25/Watt for heat but it’s even better because you have a third the electricity usage, so your capital equivalent electricity cost is just $3/Watt.
- pwg 4y ago
  > I'm more curious on how do Intel CPUs compare to space heaters? (I mean in comparison to the regular electric resistance heaters.) The 'heat' produced by a CPU in operation is resistive heating. The heat results from the current flowing through the parasitic resistances of the silicon die. So it would be equally efficient as a space heater (as in, 100% of electrical wattage in becomes heat out). The difference is a space heater produces only heat, while a CPU might be performing some other function, while also producing heat.
stametseater 4y ago
In large rooms, a radiative space heater (the dish sort) are superior to either because you can point it directly at the person who's cold and heat them, instead of heating the entire room.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  If the goal is to keep people warm. There are many reasons to heat a room beyond personal comfort. Keeping pipes and other equipment warm is a big one. Prevention of water damage, keeping the dew point outside the vapor barrier, is another. For such thing you need to warm the entire room, not just those surfaces with line of sight to a radiant heater.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    Keeping pipes from freezing is rarely a concern in most parts of the world, and you certainly don't need to turn up the furnace to "comfort levels" to do it. 10 C / 50 F is more than sufficient with adequate safety margins, but many people will complain about being uncomfortable at those temperatures. That's where directional space heaters come in.
sandworm101 4y ago
Heat pumps are great and are the current go-to for most home energy discussions, but they require a narrow delta between two close areas, basically a ready area to dump/acquire heat energy in order to warm/cool another area. They are useless in most small and all ad-hoc heating situations. For instance, there could never be a "desktop" heat pump that you can just plug in and blow hot air in room. There will never be a heatpump-heated kettle. The closest thing to a portable heatpump are portable/in-window air conditioners. They can be literally reversed in order to suck heat from outside and dump it into a room, but at that scale they are not very efficient. A heatpump oven might be theoretically possibly, but would be wildly impractical and probably very dangerous to be around.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171013-where-data-centres-store-info---and-heat-homes https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171013-where-data-centr... > ... > Stockholm Data Parks is expecting to generate enough heat to warm 2,500 residential apartments by 2018, but the long term goal is to meet 10% of the entire heating need of Stockholm by 2035. > According to Data Centres By Sweden – which is launching Stockholm-like projects across the country – only 10 MW of energy is needed to heat 20,000 modern residential apartments. The typical Facebook data centre, for example, uses 120 MW. > One of the main incentives for companies to join the programme in Stockholm is financial – they get to sell their waste heat. Fortum also provides free cold water for their cooling.

alex_duf 4y ago
oh I get that, computing creates heat and we should totally re-use it. But where CPU heat is 1 kWh of electricity = 1kWh of heat, a heat pump will have 1 kWh of electricity = 3 kWh of heat, because it's "sucking" 2kWh of heat from a medium (air, water, ground whatever) and literally making it colder. Now OP was suggesting increasing the voltage of their computer as a way to generate more heat and "save" on heating, but it wouldn't be more economical than say, heat your home with a toaster (1 kWh electricity = 1kWh heat). It works, it's just not very efficient. So I was saying, assuming you have a heat pump, better send that little bit extra energy to the heat pump than increase the voltage of your CPU. (And yes that was tongue in cheek before anyone think I'm serious for a second) But yeah, if you have computer that produce heat, and you're having to get rid of that heat that's waste and ideally it should be used somewhere else.

winter_blue 4y ago

I'm more curious on how do Intel CPUs compare to space heaters? (I mean in comparison to the regular electric resistance heaters.) Heat pumps are ultra-efficient but even the cheapest heat pumps cost a few thousand dollars (and require expert installation – so they're not suitable if you're renting, for example).

ilyt 4y ago
> I'm more curious on how do Intel CPUs compare to space heaters? (I mean in comparison to the regular electric resistance heaters.) Near-exactly same 100% efficiency of turning power to heat.
londons_explore 4y ago
For $3, you can buy a rather inefficient thermoelectric heat pump[1]. It is still more efficient than a space heater though. Any old refrigerator is also a fairly good DIY heat pump - and if you design it right, you can easily get a COP of 4+. Obviously a typical refrigerator will only do about 600 BTU/h. But thats still plenty for super insulated rooms. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001621702934.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001621702934.html?
Robotbeat 4y ago
Well you can get a fan with 1500 Watts of heat for $18 at Walmart, so the cost per watt is crazy low for these kinds of heaters, $0.012/Watt. Or just, like, steel wire of the right length shoved into an electrical outlet (not much different in principle, maybe a couple cents worth of steel wire…). Baseboard space heaters are like $90 for 1500Watts, or $0.06/Watt. A consumer GPU is like $2.80/Watt. Now the cost of the electricity itself, if converted to a capital cost equivalent, is like $10/Watt for residential 24/7/365 electricity in much of the US. An air source heat pump like a mini split costs like $900 for 3600 Watts of heat (typical weird units like 12,000 BTU per hour but usually they omit the “per hour” part because marketing people hate clarity LOL), so just $0.25/Watt for heat but it’s even better because you have a third the electricity usage, so your capital equivalent electricity cost is just $3/Watt.
pwg 4y ago
> I'm more curious on how do Intel CPUs compare to space heaters? (I mean in comparison to the regular electric resistance heaters.) The 'heat' produced by a CPU in operation is resistive heating. The heat results from the current flowing through the parasitic resistances of the silicon die. So it would be equally efficient as a space heater (as in, 100% of electrical wattage in becomes heat out). The difference is a space heater produces only heat, while a CPU might be performing some other function, while also producing heat.

stametseater 4y ago

In large rooms, a radiative space heater (the dish sort) are superior to either because you can point it directly at the person who's cold and heat them, instead of heating the entire room.

sandworm101 4y ago
If the goal is to keep people warm. There are many reasons to heat a room beyond personal comfort. Keeping pipes and other equipment warm is a big one. Prevention of water damage, keeping the dew point outside the vapor barrier, is another. For such thing you need to warm the entire room, not just those surfaces with line of sight to a radiant heater.
- stametseater 4y ago
  Keeping pipes from freezing is rarely a concern in most parts of the world, and you certainly don't need to turn up the furnace to "comfort levels" to do it. 10 C / 50 F is more than sufficient with adequate safety margins, but many people will complain about being uncomfortable at those temperatures. That's where directional space heaters come in.

sandworm101 4y ago

Heat pumps are great and are the current go-to for most home energy discussions, but they require a narrow delta between two close areas, basically a ready area to dump/acquire heat energy in order to warm/cool another area. They are useless in most small and all ad-hoc heating situations. For instance, there could never be a "desktop" heat pump that you can just plug in and blow hot air in room. There will never be a heatpump-heated kettle. The closest thing to a portable heatpump are portable/in-window air conditioners. They can be literally reversed in order to suck heat from outside and dump it into a room, but at that scale they are not very efficient. A heatpump oven might be theoretically possibly, but would be wildly impractical and probably very dangerous to be around.