3 ms·

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... > ..

by 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.