ViscloReader@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 14:07
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Money is a human concept and “expendable” (to some limit of course inflation) Energy is not. If this consume less energy than just venting it out then I think it is a great idea
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
on 06 Nov 2023 16:53
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Money is (a very imperfect proxy for) value, be it the value of energy, human labor and time, limited resources, etc. It’s somewhat arbitrary, but not completely.
theluddite@lemmy.ml
on 06 Nov 2023 14:07
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If you take it as a given that we should have giant warehouses full of computers using tons of energy while doing mostly pointless tasks during a climate emergency, then yes, it’s a great idea.
That’s a bad faith gotcha and you know it. My lemmy account, the comment I just wrote, and the entire internet you and I care about and interact with are a tiny sliver of these data warehouses. I have actually done sysadmin and devops for giant e-commerce company, and we spent the vast majority of our compute power on analytics for user tracking and advertising. The actual site itself was tiny compared to our surveillance-value-extraction work. That was a major e-commerce website you’ve heard of.
Bitcoin alone used half a percent of the entire world’s electricity consumption a couple of years ago. That’s just bitcoin, not even including the other crypto. Now with the AI hype, companies are building even more of these warehouses to train LLMs.
I didn’t say there are no good uses for data. Of course there are! I even wrote “useless things” in the comment to distinguish from real uses.
Personally I think self driving cars are never going to happen and the LLM coding hype fundamentally misunderstands what software does and is actually for, but even though I don’t agree with your examples, only a complete fucking moron would think computing in general is useless. My point is that current computing practices are insanely wasteful.
ilickfrogs@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 14:32
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In theory, sure. But, realistically I can’t picture an economically feasible way to transport it.
topinambour_rex@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 14:47
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Water or steam.
nevemsenki@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 15:36
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If your server room generates steam you may have a bit of overheating issue.
Hot water is possible, but you’d need crazy insulated pipes and/or close buildings to heat before the water cools down too much.
someguy3@lemmy.ca
on 06 Nov 2023 17:40
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With this scale you probably can’t get that much or go too far. You’re probably looking at partially heating a nearby office building or large apartment. I’d like to know for sure.
space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Nov 2023 19:58
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You could use the warm water to cool down some other factory that could turn it to steam.
someguy3@lemmy.ca
on 06 Nov 2023 14:54
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This kind of district heating is not terribly uncommon. The question here is how hot can you get the water and if you have to ‘top it off’.
Sneptaur@pawb.social
on 06 Nov 2023 15:43
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Heat pumps can be used to move heat around in a building. If the data center is directly adjacent to housing, this would be trivial to implement efficiently. The same system cooling the data center would be heating homes.
In the summer though, you’d have to push that heat to atmosphere, so this only helps in colder climates
toofpic@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 17:26
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Yep, we’re working close to guys from Energy Machines company, they do solutions exacrly like that - use heat from one part of the building in another one, no matter, data center or something else.
IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 17:31
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Proximity is a huge issue. I’ve worked at a dozen or so datacenters over the years, and none are all that close to residential areas…l
Sneptaur@pawb.social
on 06 Nov 2023 18:56
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I’ve been inside of data centers that are in an otherwise normal office building. Hospitals and stuff too. This could be a useful technology.
athos77@kbin.social
on 06 Nov 2023 15:46
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There's a thing called industrial symbiosis, where the waste products from one business become the inputs for another business. It takes a bit of effort and planning, but it can result in a much more sustainable world. There's a place in Denmark called Kalundborg that's really been working on it and has some nice examples.
GabberPiet@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 16:40
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I think the problem is that the temperature of the heat source is too low. It’s quite hard to recuperate energy from low temperature waste heat economically. With waste heat from high temperature sources, you can use steam, which can ‘store’ a lot of energy because of the latent enthalpy difference, which results in low mass flow rates. With water, you would need higher mass flow rates, so bigger tubes, pumps …
space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Nov 2023 19:55
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You use water as a thermal agent. All you need to transport it is some insulated pipes.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
on 06 Nov 2023 19:55
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In winter, you can preheat drinking water from 4 °C to 10 °C for many households, which will decrease their heating bills. This is how low-temperature geothermal sources are utilized in my country.
As for summer, there are facilities/industries that need warm or hot water, such as swimming pools.
someguy3@lemmy.ca
on 06 Nov 2023 14:56
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I expected the article to make a case for it being a waste of money, but they didn’t.
shortwavesurfer@monero.town
on 06 Nov 2023 18:31
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How would you transport it? If its not a lot hotter than the ambiant it moves slowly. As an example, its been cold here recently at night (45F). My house is currently 67F and the outside temp is 78F. I have the door open which does allow the outdoor temp to warm the house, but its incredibly slow since its only an 11F difference. I have a few computers mining crypto in my bedroom and the heat from those has kept me from really having to use my heater. I have had to use it, but not nearly as much as i would otherwise.
Note: i call this the temperature delta, though that may not be the correct term for it.
philpo@feddit.de
on 06 Nov 2023 18:54
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Ever heard of heat pumps?
shortwavesurfer@monero.town
on 06 Nov 2023 19:09
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Basically an AC with longer lines. Usually used to heat water to radiate in these circumstances.
The same principles can be applied here.
shortwavesurfer@monero.town
on 06 Nov 2023 20:53
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Just watched a heat pump install vid and that looks a bit complicated. Something like window AC units just require you to install it and turn it on. Shouldnt heat pumps be simple like that too?
A window unit is technically a heat pump (air to air heat pump).
But they are terribly inefficient and ineffective - they often achieve less than 25% of the heating capacity of a proper heating setup.
(Cooling is a bit different)
Heatpumps are comparably easy to install if you compare them to regular thermal heating. You won’t need a chimney, no fuel storage or gas pipes. And they are much, much,much easier to maintain - no ash removal, no cleaning of potentially cancerous substances from a burn chamber,etc.
Of course they are still more complicated than a window unit - but that is only slightly so with the benefit of massive gains.
niemcycle@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 19:35
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You’d probably use water as a thermal conduction medium, similar to how old buildings had a boiler in the basement which heated water which was then sent to rooms through radiators.
shortwavesurfer@monero.town
on 06 Nov 2023 19:43
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But servers couldnt get the water to boiling point. I have lived in several apartments (Minnesota) that used the boiler method you described. Heck, my office was the old pilsbury mansion and used it. I even had to monitor the boiler pressures during maintainence once.
space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Nov 2023 19:54
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Water and insulated pipes.
CalicoJack@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Nov 2023 22:52
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The only way it makes sense is within the same facility. You could use water or refrigerant in heat exchangers, and run insulated lines to other parts of the building. Wouldn’t do too much, but might see a slight reduction in heating costs.
HarkMahlberg@kbin.social
on 06 Nov 2023 19:47
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Most of the comments are about the technical or logistical challenge of making this work, but I've got a separate concern. Who would want to pay Amazon for their heating bills? Facebook? Google? They already turned the internet to shit and made fortunes for the privilege, why would I want to pay them for waste heat? What regulations exist to make sure they don't reroute the heat away from my house or apartment while I freeze? What halts them from gouging prices for heat that is a literal byproduct of their actual business? Like I already have enough problems that come from my power and heating company being an effective monopoly on my region. I don't trust data center corps from creating the same, or worse, problems.
marsokod@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 23:40
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This is very likely not enough heat to run it solely. It will be like a preheater for a district heating company. Or partially heat an office tower, which means they have normal heating system too.
space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 06 Nov 2023 19:53
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A lot of people don’t realize that this has been implemented and been used for a long time. In Romania, during communism, most major cities had infrastructure for using heat produced in factories and thermal (usually coal) power plants.
There are 2 ways in which it was implemented. One was to heat water into steam and to transport the steam using insulated pipes to local facilities that heat water. This can be more efficient, but the disadvantage is that working on pressurized steam pipes is really dangerous for the workers. There have been numerous accidents in the news about those.
Alternatively, you can simply transport hot water through insulated pipes to local facilities, these can heat the water additionally if the water isn’t hot enough, and then it’s distributed to homes.
The main issue in Romania is that these systems haven’t been properly maintained in at least 30 years, a lot of heat gets lost and they tend to fail a lot, people get frustrated and disconnect from the network, the neighbors get a worse service because not enough hot water is consumed for the water in the pipes to not go cold and they disconnect too, and the system just gets worse and worse. Some cities have enacted a policy not allowing people to disconnect.
iAvicenna@lemmy.world
on 06 Nov 2023 21:43
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We had a guy in our lab growing pepper plants beside the computers that he kept running for simulations
JakenVeina@lemm.ee
on 07 Nov 2023 00:04
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Seems more like such waste heat should be recovered and fed back into the system, to reduce energy consumption for the facility as a whole. If there’s enough waste heat to meaningfully talk about transferring it to homes via water or steam, surely there’s enough to make some electricity.
I sure don’t want Amazon or Microsoft involved in the utilities businesses, as another commenter pointed out.
UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world
on 07 Nov 2023 07:49
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Heat isnt a great generator of electrical power. At least not at lower temperatures ( below boiling, for steam generation). It also suffers from conversion loss. Anytime you convert energy, there is a loss. Using the heat directly avoids another conversion.
The data centres are trying to get rid of the heat!
Are you proposing converting the heat to electricity? That would require a huge amount of heat pumps (to concentrate the heat) and a turbine hall (the smaller, the less efficient). You’d be talking about 20% efficiency at most, probably more like 10% for the total system efficient.
Compare that to a good district heating system which is typically 90% efficient.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
on 07 Nov 2023 08:34
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I worked in a building designed to be heated by the mainframe in the basement.
4 years later the mainframe was upgraded to a new mainframe which didn’t put out the heat the old one did.
It’s been heated by a conventional system ever since, but the gawdawful conduction pipes still mar the exterior. Ugliest boondoggle ever.
zwaetschgeraeuber@lemmy.world
on 07 Nov 2023 11:18
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interesting. i work in a dc in my country and here the neighbirs dont want the heat even for free lol
threaded - newest
Money is a human concept and “expendable” (to some limit of course inflation) Energy is not. If this consume less energy than just venting it out then I think it is a great idea
Money is (a very imperfect proxy for) value, be it the value of energy, human labor and time, limited resources, etc. It’s somewhat arbitrary, but not completely.
If you take it as a given that we should have giant warehouses full of computers using tons of energy while doing mostly pointless tasks during a climate emergency, then yes, it’s a great idea.
Where do you think your lemmy account and the comment you just wrote live
That’s a bad faith gotcha and you know it. My lemmy account, the comment I just wrote, and the entire internet you and I care about and interact with are a tiny sliver of these data warehouses. I have actually done sysadmin and devops for giant e-commerce company, and we spent the vast majority of our compute power on analytics for user tracking and advertising. The actual site itself was tiny compared to our surveillance-value-extraction work. That was a major e-commerce website you’ve heard of.
Bitcoin alone used half a percent of the entire world’s electricity consumption a couple of years ago. That’s just bitcoin, not even including the other crypto. Now with the AI hype, companies are building even more of these warehouses to train LLMs.
Fair enough
Even LLMs are fuzzy though. Some are used in programming/code generation now for example, would that be also a waste?
What about other AI, like generating and testing software for ADAS/self driving cars? A bunch of those datacenters are HPC crunching.
I didn’t say there are no good uses for data. Of course there are! I even wrote “useless things” in the comment to distinguish from real uses.
Personally I think self driving cars are never going to happen and the LLM coding hype fundamentally misunderstands what software does and is actually for, but even though I don’t agree with your examples, only a complete fucking moron would think computing in general is useless. My point is that current computing practices are insanely wasteful.
In theory, sure. But, realistically I can’t picture an economically feasible way to transport it.
Water or steam.
If your server room generates steam you may have a bit of overheating issue.
Hot water is possible, but you’d need crazy insulated pipes and/or close buildings to heat before the water cools down too much.
With this scale you probably can’t get that much or go too far. You’re probably looking at partially heating a nearby office building or large apartment. I’d like to know for sure.
You could use the warm water to cool down some other factory that could turn it to steam.
This kind of district heating is not terribly uncommon. The question here is how hot can you get the water and if you have to ‘top it off’.
Heat pumps can be used to move heat around in a building. If the data center is directly adjacent to housing, this would be trivial to implement efficiently. The same system cooling the data center would be heating homes.
In the summer though, you’d have to push that heat to atmosphere, so this only helps in colder climates
Yep, we’re working close to guys from Energy Machines company, they do solutions exacrly like that - use heat from one part of the building in another one, no matter, data center or something else.
Proximity is a huge issue. I’ve worked at a dozen or so datacenters over the years, and none are all that close to residential areas…l
I’ve been inside of data centers that are in an otherwise normal office building. Hospitals and stuff too. This could be a useful technology.
There's a thing called industrial symbiosis, where the waste products from one business become the inputs for another business. It takes a bit of effort and planning, but it can result in a much more sustainable world. There's a place in Denmark called Kalundborg that's really been working on it and has some nice examples.
I think the problem is that the temperature of the heat source is too low. It’s quite hard to recuperate energy from low temperature waste heat economically. With waste heat from high temperature sources, you can use steam, which can ‘store’ a lot of energy because of the latent enthalpy difference, which results in low mass flow rates. With water, you would need higher mass flow rates, so bigger tubes, pumps …
You use water as a thermal agent. All you need to transport it is some insulated pipes.
In winter, you can preheat drinking water from 4 °C to 10 °C for many households, which will decrease their heating bills. This is how low-temperature geothermal sources are utilized in my country.
As for summer, there are facilities/industries that need warm or hot water, such as swimming pools.
I expected the article to make a case for it being a waste of money, but they didn’t.
How would you transport it? If its not a lot hotter than the ambiant it moves slowly. As an example, its been cold here recently at night (45F). My house is currently 67F and the outside temp is 78F. I have the door open which does allow the outdoor temp to warm the house, but its incredibly slow since its only an 11F difference. I have a few computers mining crypto in my bedroom and the heat from those has kept me from really having to use my heater. I have had to use it, but not nearly as much as i would otherwise.
Note: i call this the temperature delta, though that may not be the correct term for it.
Ever heard of heat pumps?
Heard of them, yes. Know anything about them, no.
Basically an AC with longer lines. Usually used to heat water to radiate in these circumstances.
The same principles can be applied here.
Just watched a heat pump install vid and that looks a bit complicated. Something like window AC units just require you to install it and turn it on. Shouldnt heat pumps be simple like that too?
A window unit is technically a heat pump (air to air heat pump). But they are terribly inefficient and ineffective - they often achieve less than 25% of the heating capacity of a proper heating setup. (Cooling is a bit different)
Heatpumps are comparably easy to install if you compare them to regular thermal heating. You won’t need a chimney, no fuel storage or gas pipes. And they are much, much,much easier to maintain - no ash removal, no cleaning of potentially cancerous substances from a burn chamber,etc.
Of course they are still more complicated than a window unit - but that is only slightly so with the benefit of massive gains.
You’d probably use water as a thermal conduction medium, similar to how old buildings had a boiler in the basement which heated water which was then sent to rooms through radiators.
But servers couldnt get the water to boiling point. I have lived in several apartments (Minnesota) that used the boiler method you described. Heck, my office was the old pilsbury mansion and used it. I even had to monitor the boiler pressures during maintainence once.
Water and insulated pipes.
The only way it makes sense is within the same facility. You could use water or refrigerant in heat exchangers, and run insulated lines to other parts of the building. Wouldn’t do too much, but might see a slight reduction in heating costs.
Most of the comments are about the technical or logistical challenge of making this work, but I've got a separate concern. Who would want to pay Amazon for their heating bills? Facebook? Google? They already turned the internet to shit and made fortunes for the privilege, why would I want to pay them for waste heat? What regulations exist to make sure they don't reroute the heat away from my house or apartment while I freeze? What halts them from gouging prices for heat that is a literal byproduct of their actual business? Like I already have enough problems that come from my power and heating company being an effective monopoly on my region. I don't trust data center corps from creating the same, or worse, problems.
As heating network, they are and will be regulated like other energy suppliers: gov.uk/…/energy-security-bill-factsheet-heat-netw…
This is very likely not enough heat to run it solely. It will be like a preheater for a district heating company. Or partially heat an office tower, which means they have normal heating system too.
A lot of people don’t realize that this has been implemented and been used for a long time. In Romania, during communism, most major cities had infrastructure for using heat produced in factories and thermal (usually coal) power plants.
There are 2 ways in which it was implemented. One was to heat water into steam and to transport the steam using insulated pipes to local facilities that heat water. This can be more efficient, but the disadvantage is that working on pressurized steam pipes is really dangerous for the workers. There have been numerous accidents in the news about those.
Alternatively, you can simply transport hot water through insulated pipes to local facilities, these can heat the water additionally if the water isn’t hot enough, and then it’s distributed to homes.
The main issue in Romania is that these systems haven’t been properly maintained in at least 30 years, a lot of heat gets lost and they tend to fail a lot, people get frustrated and disconnect from the network, the neighbors get a worse service because not enough hot water is consumed for the water in the pipes to not go cold and they disconnect too, and the system just gets worse and worse. Some cities have enacted a policy not allowing people to disconnect.
We had a guy in our lab growing pepper plants beside the computers that he kept running for simulations
Seems more like such waste heat should be recovered and fed back into the system, to reduce energy consumption for the facility as a whole. If there’s enough waste heat to meaningfully talk about transferring it to homes via water or steam, surely there’s enough to make some electricity.
I sure don’t want Amazon or Microsoft involved in the utilities businesses, as another commenter pointed out.
Heat isnt a great generator of electrical power. At least not at lower temperatures ( below boiling, for steam generation). It also suffers from conversion loss. Anytime you convert energy, there is a loss. Using the heat directly avoids another conversion.
The data centres are trying to get rid of the heat!
Are you proposing converting the heat to electricity? That would require a huge amount of heat pumps (to concentrate the heat) and a turbine hall (the smaller, the less efficient). You’d be talking about 20% efficiency at most, probably more like 10% for the total system efficient.
Compare that to a good district heating system which is typically 90% efficient.
I worked in a building designed to be heated by the mainframe in the basement.
4 years later the mainframe was upgraded to a new mainframe which didn’t put out the heat the old one did.
It’s been heated by a conventional system ever since, but the gawdawful conduction pipes still mar the exterior. Ugliest boondoggle ever.
interesting. i work in a dc in my country and here the neighbirs dont want the heat even for free lol