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That's a good idea, assuming that these datacenters would use a close-loop water cooling, as opposed to evaporation techniques, which waste enormous amount of w
by krasin 3y ago
That's a good idea, assuming that these datacenters would use a close-loop water cooling, as opposed to evaporation techniques, which waste enormous amount of water. See the previous discussion about datacenters in dry areas: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37732550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37732550
- specialist 3y ago1/2 of the energy we consume ends up as heat. 1/2 of that is for industrial use. In our glorious renewable energy future, heat from data centers will be harnessed to recharge thermal batteries, run district heat (homes, buildings, pools), supply industrial heat, etc.
- jeffbee 3y ago> 1/2 of the energy we consume ends up as heat 100% of the energy used by a datacenter becomes heat.
- specialist 3y agoRight. Poor phrasing, sorry. I'm trying to say that waste heat could be used downstream, eg for heating homes or generating steam. Since heat is the end use of 1/2 of energy, this kind of conservation is low hanging fruit. IIRC, Google, Microsoft, others have already committed to pilot projects for capturing heat from their data centers. Transforming an expense into a revenue source. Woot.