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#1 2025-02-08 12:52:07
- Void
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- Registered: 2011-12-29
- Posts: 8,061
An idea stimulated by Calliban: Data Heat>>>Homes
Calliban at one point suggested that heat from data centers could heat homes.
So, could you do that to individual homes? Could you power a small data center to heat someone's hot water heater?
Could you heat a whole home, with a data center?
I will grant you that time latency will diminish some of the rewards, but for instance if someone has a solar power system on their home with batteries, then they might get payout of money and heat to use that electricity to run a small data center. So, then to heat a home with waste heat. Good in the winter at least. Hot water heating good most of the time.
I suppose that in the summer it might be possible to evaporate water for cooling, in locations with a lot of water.
Does it matter if your compute is seasonal? Granted, you aren't getting as much out of the system, but you are using computing waste heat to heat things in the cooler months or even perhaps at night.
Obviously this would make cold places better locations to live. Greenhouses in winter might be used as radiators.
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Last edited by Void (2025-02-08 12:58:45)
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#2 2025-02-09 01:41:52
- kbd512
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- Registered: 2015-01-02
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Re: An idea stimulated by Calliban: Data Heat>>>Homes
Void,
That's actually a brilliant idea. I never even thought about that until you posted this. I don't know why, but it never "clicked" in my brain. Maybe there's some reason why we're not doing this already, but it's still a great idea. For every Watt of electrical power consumed by a data center, you're going to get about a Watt of waste heat generated by the end of the process. If you cooled all of your electronics using liquid-to-liquid cooling, exchanging heat with hot water tanks, then you'd get quite a lot of potential heating capacity.
We have enormous data centers here in America, consuming 100MW of power or more in some cases. Figure 5W of heating required per square foot of floor space for a well-insulated northern climate home, and 2,500ft^2 per home, which implies 12.5kWth per home. That means you could heat up to 8,000 homes using the electricity you've already consumed, on top of getting to use the electricity for computational purposes. The waste heat is at the correct temperature to provide home heating or hot water.
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#3 2025-02-09 03:48:09
- Void
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- Registered: 2011-12-29
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Re: An idea stimulated by Calliban: Data Heat>>>Homes
I am encouraged by your more precise evaluation of the ideas.
It has occurred to me that a heated swimming pool could also be a case. Where it not only radiates heat but is likely to be evaporatively cooled.
And it further occurred to me that a series of process might have a potential: Data Center>Heat Pump>Low Temperature up to 180 degrees C industrial heat process.
https://www.sintef.no/en/latest-news/20 … pump-ever/
Quote:
Researchers working with industrial partners have developed the world’s first heat pump producing temperatures of up to 180 degrees celcius. Such record high temperatures will enable one fifth of European industry to reduce its energy consumption by up to 70 percent, and become entirely climate neutral.
And then perhaps a chance could exist to distill sea water, or to use it as an evaporator. Or just sea water as evaporative cooling.
Data Center>Heat Pump>Low Temperature up to 180 degrees C industrial heat process. The perhaps a greenhouse & swimming pool. the evaporation from the swimming pool perhaps shunted to a greenhouse which could perhaps act as a condenser and radiator. So you could use the swimming pool & greenhouse heat dissipater as adaptable to seasons. Even if the summer is warm, the greenhouse might not grow plants in the warm season but simply overheated to radiate heat and to condense water. Then in the winter cold, plants could be grown in the greenhouse. For a swimming pool, the circulation of dry air might also evaporatively cool.
The complexity might become a bit troublesome, but for certain cases it might be worth it.
I believe that I recall that Calliban, suggested using city heating as a radiator for this sort of thing.
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Last edited by Void (2025-02-09 03:59:48)
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