5 ms·

Heat Your Home with Data

15 points by uptown 12y ago

lutorm 12y ago
The article is so bad I can't tell whether they are somehow arguing that computers should be made "more efficient" at making heat (news flash, they are already 100% efficient at that) or whether it's an infrastructure proposal where they are arguing that data centers should be farmed out into peoples homes and thus keep them warm...
- teraflop 12y ago
  I'm not reassured by the fact that it links to http://ramblings.jamestindall.info/post/102216847/1mb-1-lump-of-coal http://ramblings.jamestindall.info/post/102216847/1mb-1-lump... as a source. That page manages to overestimate the energy cost of data transmission by 9 orders of magniture by confusing milliwatt-hours with megawatt-hours.
RankingMember 12y ago
In the summer I'm guessing heat would just be vented outside, eh?
- alricb 12y ago
  Or used for domestic hot water, which is done in some data centers.
SwellJoe 12y ago
"Data" doesn't make (much) heat. Data processing might. Calculation certainly does. I heat some of my house with cryptocurrency miners (which are not cost-effective to run during warm months, but in the winter are as effective as space heaters, and slightly offset their cost to operate with cryptocurrency returns). If there were a service that provided computation for a few and paid people with big GPUs to run it, that'd be really cool. I'd like for my computers to be doing something a bit more useful to the world than "proof-of-work" for a handful of also-ran cryptocurrencies. (I also have some Bitcoin ASICs, but they produce so little revenue that I don't run them anymore, even in the winter.)
- lutorm 12y ago
  Do the miners also offset their investment cost? It seems that, depending on how expensive they are, it may be a better solution to just run the space heater.
  - SwellJoe 12y ago
    Did mine? Pretty close to it, at least when Bitcoin was high. Would they today? Certainly not. I bought my ASICs and within a couple of months had recouped about 80% of the cost, and probably another 5% in the following couple of months before I turned them off due to heat. The GPU miners continued to make a reasonable amount of money by using currency hopping pools. But, they probably reached only about 65% of being recouped. Now, it would take a couple of winters to make another 5% back (but, since I'd be running heaters anyway, it might still work out OK...or, I may still be better off selling the GPUs, since they are still roughly current generation technology (I have a mix of R270, R280, and R290). I bought before the demand drove prices up, but still it was a pretty big chunk of change compared to the four or five space heaters they could replace. I certainly don't recommend mining. I got involved partly for the experience, as I was writing a novel that included Bitcoin oriented stuff, and partly for the GPU (I wanted a better gaming system anyway, so one 290 was getting purchased, no matter what), and partly for the gold rush (knowing it was probably a poor investment). But, it seems like there ought to be a system that pays people for their GPU cycles. Though what they'd be doing is up in the air. I can't think of much that doesn't also require fast communication. Folding@Home and SETI@Home are cool, but don't pay, which is unfortunate, since I don't run these things without something offsetting the electrical cost.
- X-combinator 12y ago
  I personally think this whole concept is amazing. Especially for big data companies, like Google.
TTPrograms 12y ago
I've thought through this idea a few times (cloud processing in people's homes for heating). It's pretty hard to make the economics work out. You can bring down hardware costs using older processor tech, which is ok since you don't care about efficiency. Alternately you put a shit ton of mobile phone processors on a board. You also need some really advanced software systems if you want to do any real processing and be robust to random failure of nodes. I haven't run the numbers, but I'm skeptical. Cryptomining doesn't seem like a sufficient return these days, and if you're using electricity over gas it's a total no-go. It's the sort of idea that my physics background loves (why the hell are we turning so much energy straight into entropy all the time instead of doing useful work first?) but pragmatically it doesn't seem to work out. As a side note, if you want to be fun at parties talk about your computer as your new 100% efficient space heater :)
wmf 12y ago
Microsoft proposed this in 2011: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=150265 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1502...
wrcwill 12y ago
If you are otherwise heating your home using electrical heating, then this is correct. However, heat pumps are more than 100% "efficient". Using X electrical energy you can heat your home more than 2X. Don't replace a heat pump with computers.
captn3m0 12y ago
I have AdDetector extension installed and it gave me a prominent warning at the top of the page saying: >[AdDetector] This page is an ad paid for by BMW
Rury 12y ago
Wow is this such a bad article. I'm still not even sure what exactly Orsini and his startup aim to accomplish. "That’s the basic idea behind Orsini’s startup, Project Exergy: rather than transporting electricity across power lines to generate our heat — and wasting most of the power in the process — Exergy proposes that households and business can generate the heat they need onsite, using computation" Computation uses electricity...
samthedoctor 12y ago
http://mobile.eweek.com/servers/german-company-offers-to-heat-homes-with-cloud-servers.html http://mobile.eweek.com/servers/german-company-offers-to-hea...

15 points by uptown 12y ago

The article is so bad I can't tell whether they are somehow arguing that computers should be made "more efficient" at making heat (news flash, they are already 100% efficient at that) or whether it's an infrastructure proposal where they are arguing that data centers should be farmed out into peoples homes and thus keep them warm...

teraflop 12y ago
I'm not reassured by the fact that it links to http://ramblings.jamestindall.info/post/102216847/1mb-1-lump-of-coal http://ramblings.jamestindall.info/post/102216847/1mb-1-lump... as a source. That page manages to overestimate the energy cost of data transmission by 9 orders of magniture by confusing milliwatt-hours with megawatt-hours.

RankingMember 12y ago

In the summer I'm guessing heat would just be vented outside, eh?

alricb 12y ago
Or used for domestic hot water, which is done in some data centers.

SwellJoe 12y ago

"Data" doesn't make (much) heat. Data processing might. Calculation certainly does. I heat some of my house with cryptocurrency miners (which are not cost-effective to run during warm months, but in the winter are as effective as space heaters, and slightly offset their cost to operate with cryptocurrency returns). If there were a service that provided computation for a few and paid people with big GPUs to run it, that'd be really cool. I'd like for my computers to be doing something a bit more useful to the world than "proof-of-work" for a handful of also-ran cryptocurrencies. (I also have some Bitcoin ASICs, but they produce so little revenue that I don't run them anymore, even in the winter.)

lutorm 12y ago
Do the miners also offset their investment cost? It seems that, depending on how expensive they are, it may be a better solution to just run the space heater.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  Did mine? Pretty close to it, at least when Bitcoin was high. Would they today? Certainly not. I bought my ASICs and within a couple of months had recouped about 80% of the cost, and probably another 5% in the following couple of months before I turned them off due to heat. The GPU miners continued to make a reasonable amount of money by using currency hopping pools. But, they probably reached only about 65% of being recouped. Now, it would take a couple of winters to make another 5% back (but, since I'd be running heaters anyway, it might still work out OK...or, I may still be better off selling the GPUs, since they are still roughly current generation technology (I have a mix of R270, R280, and R290). I bought before the demand drove prices up, but still it was a pretty big chunk of change compared to the four or five space heaters they could replace. I certainly don't recommend mining. I got involved partly for the experience, as I was writing a novel that included Bitcoin oriented stuff, and partly for the GPU (I wanted a better gaming system anyway, so one 290 was getting purchased, no matter what), and partly for the gold rush (knowing it was probably a poor investment). But, it seems like there ought to be a system that pays people for their GPU cycles. Though what they'd be doing is up in the air. I can't think of much that doesn't also require fast communication. Folding@Home and SETI@Home are cool, but don't pay, which is unfortunate, since I don't run these things without something offsetting the electrical cost.
X-combinator 12y ago
I personally think this whole concept is amazing. Especially for big data companies, like Google.

TTPrograms 12y ago

I've thought through this idea a few times (cloud processing in people's homes for heating). It's pretty hard to make the economics work out. You can bring down hardware costs using older processor tech, which is ok since you don't care about efficiency. Alternately you put a shit ton of mobile phone processors on a board. You also need some really advanced software systems if you want to do any real processing and be robust to random failure of nodes. I haven't run the numbers, but I'm skeptical. Cryptomining doesn't seem like a sufficient return these days, and if you're using electricity over gas it's a total no-go. It's the sort of idea that my physics background loves (why the hell are we turning so much energy straight into entropy all the time instead of doing useful work first?) but pragmatically it doesn't seem to work out. As a side note, if you want to be fun at parties talk about your computer as your new 100% efficient space heater :)

wmf 12y ago

Microsoft proposed this in 2011: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=150265 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1502...

wrcwill 12y ago

If you are otherwise heating your home using electrical heating, then this is correct. However, heat pumps are more than 100% "efficient". Using X electrical energy you can heat your home more than 2X. Don't replace a heat pump with computers.

captn3m0 12y ago

I have AdDetector extension installed and it gave me a prominent warning at the top of the page saying: >[AdDetector] This page is an ad paid for by BMW

Rury 12y ago

Wow is this such a bad article. I'm still not even sure what exactly Orsini and his startup aim to accomplish. "That’s the basic idea behind Orsini’s startup, Project Exergy: rather than transporting electricity across power lines to generate our heat — and wasting most of the power in the process — Exergy proposes that households and business can generate the heat they need onsite, using computation" Computation uses electricity...

samthedoctor 12y ago

http://mobile.eweek.com/servers/german-company-offers-to-heat-homes-with-cloud-servers.html http://mobile.eweek.com/servers/german-company-offers-to-hea...