> In the right geography — somewhere with reliably cool outdoor air Aaahh, there’s the catch. “Save resources on cooling by building your data centre somewhere cold, and pollute the surrounding environment by dumping your waste heat wholesale into that!” Good job Nvidia, I almost thought we had something good there.
Waste heat from these things is negligible compared to the sun heat. I know people love to hate on these things, but come on...
Well you know, data centers are optional. The sun is not.
What a disingenuous comparison, do you hear yourself?
It was already near zero compared to various other uses. It's always depressing to me to see a lot of effort put in to "solve a problem" (with subsequent fanfare) which is only a PR or image problem in the first place.
Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming.. the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating
I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes w…
The US is very different from Europe. You have enormous amounts of space so even a Data Center that is "close by" is probably still a mile or more. In smaller places like European countries, the data centre wall might only be 100 yards or less from the back of your house so the proximity blocks light and makes you feel encroached on, even if no-one is peeping. In lots of cases, the center might have been built on open land so it is not surprising people don't appreciate their view changing from open land to "very large and tall building"
Your logic is solid, but their usage kinda implies the opposite (that skylights would make summers worse, not winters). That seems possible given the obvious dynamics of increasing the amount of direct sunlight, but based on a quick Kagi the overall effect is actually good for both summer and winter if used instead of windows rather than in addition to windows: Introducing skylights allows the total fenestration area…
"fenestration" - I love that word!
Even better is “defenestration,” a fancy term for throwing someone out of a window.
> In the right geography — somewhere with reliably cool outdoor air Aaahh, there’s the catch. “Save resources on cooling by building your data centre somewhere cold, and pollute the surrounding environment by dumping your waste heat wholesale into that!” Good job Nvidia, I almost thought we had something good there.
Have you stopped for a second to consider the utter mathematical absurdity of what you’re suggesting here? It is impossible for a datacenter to meaningfully heat more than the air in its immediate vicinity.
This has also one of the arguments against AC in France, shame on you for wanting to moving the hot air from inside to outside.
> 45C is low but not unworkable for a district heating loop, *55C is on the output, read article first pls Main problem is that it wouldn't work with buildings designed for higher heating temperature so it is limited to new builds. And it is not limited just to replacing heaters, hot water system is also designed to work with higher temperatures so heat exchanger used would have to be significantly larger Another one…
> Main problem is that it wouldn't work with buildings designed for higher heating temperature so it is limited to new builds. That's no longer the case with modern, multi-stage high temperature heat pumps [1]. These consume more electricity, yes, but still achieve far better efficiency than straight burning fuel or resistive heaters. [1] https://www.buderus.de/de/waermepumpe/hochtemperatur
I guess technically you could put heat pump at destination but that significantly eats into "free heat" part
Have you stopped for a second to consider the utter mathematical absurdity of what you’re suggesting here? It is impossible for a datacenter to meaningfully heat more than the air in its immediate vicinity.
This has also one of the arguments against AC in France, shame on you for wanting to moving the hot air from inside to outside.
It’s pretty incredible, especially given that the free education in France is actually rather decent.
> In the right geography — somewhere with reliably cool outdoor air Aaahh, there’s the catch. “Save resources on cooling by building your data centre somewhere cold, and pollute the surrounding environment by dumping your waste heat wholesale into that!” Good job Nvidia, I almost thought we had something good there.
Trust me. In the depths of a northern winter, nobody will complain about "waste heat". Just ask the manetees that huddle near reactor outflows in florida.
> In the right geography — somewhere with reliably cool outdoor air Aaahh, there’s the catch. “Save resources on cooling by building your data centre somewhere cold, and pollute the surrounding environment by dumping your waste heat wholesale into that!” Good job Nvidia, I almost thought we had something good there.
Datacenter waste heat even a problem? I only ever heard of nuclear power plants waste heat being a problem when the cooling water is dumped directly into rivers (instead of the ocean).