A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center • Hacker News Board

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#571

Post by mlyle » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

Leonard_of_Q wrote: post #570

mlyle wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the math on pumping 40C water any distance in a loop. It is hard to make it worth it. The water cools off and the pumping takes significant energy, plus the pump and all the piping cost something. Then using a heat pump on it makes it even worse. Low grade heat source is not a term I made up- it refers to heat sources under 100C. Even much hotter low grade heat usually goes unused. You usually need a perfect confl…

Here's an article on the subject of using waste heat from data centres and other sources for district heating. It includes the math you told me to do as well as references to other articles on the specific subject of using "low-grade heat sources" in combination with heat pumps to feed district heating networks. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403212...

And, again, the economics. The hypothetical Polish project cited in the paper showed a breakeven in 6.1 years... if one ignores time value of money and assumes it is delivered for the estimated cost. The annuity formula tells me that at a reasonable 10% discount rate, payback would be in 10 years. Modest overruns in cost from this naive estimation push that to never.

https://scispace.com/pdf/planning-data-center-waste-heat-re-...

And again this is a pretty idealized case-- very nearby housing, optimistic estimated costs.

Other projects analyzed in your paper had "raw" paybacks of 15 years and 17 years-- AKA never in actuality.

When we are talking about protecting the environment, efficiency and return on capital is important. You'd be better dumping those projects into generating more green energy instead of trying to reclaim the DC energy. This is why:

> > Even much hotter low grade heat usually goes unused. You usually need a perfect confluence of a warmer source, very close need for building heat, and a willingness to pay more for environmental friendliness for it all to work out.

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#572

Post by AbrahamParangi » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

wilg wrote: post #164

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #53

Land that was conquered in war. It is reasonable to find this distasteful, but it is not unethical in any coherent way.

Good luck finding pure and true land that never changed hands from war or conquest.

yeah, that’s the point

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#573

Post by AbrahamParangi » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

f33d5173 wrote: post #57

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #53

Land that was conquered in war. It is reasonable to find this distasteful, but it is not unethical in any coherent way.

3000 years of philosophy, but fortunately you're here to tell us "war exists, so nothing can ever be bad or good".

and how much of that philosophy do you even know?

Re: A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center

#574

Post by ipdashc » Mon, Jun 15, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

dataflow wrote: post #527

ipdashc wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, you joke (I think?) but data center companies could genuinely at least open up for tours to try to appeal to the public, if public approval is apparently such a concern. It's funny that they haven't done it at all yet. Think nuclear power plants in the 60s or 70s, many of them were open for tours or school field trips or such to try to make them more appealing to the populace around them. I haven't heard of…

> data center companies could genuinely at least open up for tours to try to appeal to the public, if public approval is apparently such a concern. Do you actually find anything appealing about a datacenter? I've been to one and while it was mildly cool from the standpoint of "wow how do they manage this many machines" I didn't find anything appealing about it that would make me want it in my neighborhood.

Sure, I think they're neat. I've been inside a few smaller ones but not any true modern hyperscaler style ones. They're big buildings with cool security systems, power setups, HVAC setups. It'd be fun to see inside. Nothing on the level of a nuclear plant, of course, but about as cool as it'd be to tour any big industrial facility, I'd imagine.

Which isn't to imply I'm "pro data center" or whatever but if they're going to build them it'd at least be nice to show people inside. This seems like pretty basic PR stuff that developers of large industrial facilities (again, nuclear plants, hydro dams etc) figured out ages ago.