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Nice article. It certainly works at scale because of the economies. I think this distributed system has potential but there are some issues. There are also some
by jsingleton 11y ago
Nice article. It certainly works at scale because of the economies. I think this distributed system has potential but there are some issues. There are also some things they could do to make it better if the trial is a success.
Using resistive heating (which is what this is) is not very efficient (even if it's a by-product). A better way to heat your home is to not waste power and use it instead to run an electric heat pump (which are over 100% efficient). There is a good analysis in the "Mythconceptions" section at the end of chapter I.11 of the excellent "Sustainable Energy — without the hot air" [0] on p71 (p84 of the free PDF).
That's the downside but there are some interesting applications. They could enable you to host your own personal cloud on the box in your home. So you know where it is.
You could vary the operating time of the servers so they only operate (or at least only run at 100%) when heating is needed. This could be based on the season, an external temperature sensor or weather data. Processing could migrate between the hemispheres of the world depending on the season.
The load could also be varied based on the local grid demands and power mix. Various real-time data sources are available that report on how green the current energy mix is [1] [2]. You can even just measure the frequency of the electricity to see how well generation is matching consumption. This is known as dynamic demand or demand shaping and you can even be paid by the grid operator for it so it could be a good business model. It would also be nice if they partnered with green power companies that buy their energy from renewable sources.
[0] http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html
[1] http://www.earth.org.uk/_gridCarbonIntensityGB.html http://www.earth.org.uk/_gridCarbonIntensityGB.html
[2] http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
- masklinn 11y ago> Using resistive heating (which is what this is) is not very efficient (even if it's a by-product). If heat is a byproduct it is highly efficient to actually use it rather than waste it. Here the electricity would be used either way for the processing tasks. The system would be inefficient if it just ran busy wait to produce heat, but that's not the case. > A better way to heat your home is to not waste power and use it instead to run an electric heat pump (which are over 100% efficient). "100% efficient" makes no sense, let alone "over 100% efficient", you're talking about coefficient of performance (the device's energetic ROI). If you ignore what the system is actually doing, the eRadiator thing has infinite efficiency since you're not paying for any heating (aside from installation costs, which you also have to pay for a heat pump)
- reacweb 11y agoThe over 100% efficient means that the heat produced in the room is greater that the energy taken from the wall plug. This makes sense for me.
- masklinn 11y agoThat's not how thermal efficiency works. And if you don't care for actual thermal efficiency, the energy taken from the wall plug is irrelevant if you're not paying for it.
- reacweb 11y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency#Heat_pumps_and_refrigerators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency#Heat_pumps_a... The expression "coefficient of performance" is used instead of efficiency for heat pump.