> Start-up Deep Green charges clients to use its computing power for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
What about running the compute workloads of the municipality instead?
Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
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Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#22I don't understand how a server (the "washing-machine-sized datacenter") can heat up any fraction of a swimming pool appreciably. Wouldn't it be a few kW tops?
Pre-GPU times you'd be right, but these days a 4U server could have 8 GPUs pulling 350+ watts each. A washing machine sized unit could contain perhaps 4 of these 4U servers so the unit as a whole could be drawing upwards of 11kW.
Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#23Providing remote heat is a common thing in Switzerland[1]. Just like Waste valorisation plants[2] that additionally produce electricity.
[1] https://www.computerwoche.de/article/2690747/rechenzentrum-h...
Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#24I don't understand how a server (the "washing-machine-sized datacenter") can heat up any fraction of a swimming pool appreciably. Wouldn't it be a few kW tops?
No expert but I would think an indoor pool in a temperature controlled environment would control for a lot of heat loss from the water.
Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#25Is it feasible to do this at smaller scales? Would be cool to use my compurers to heat water at home. Put all that useless heat to good use. Air conditioners could do it too, right? Pump heat into a water reservoir instead of just throwing it away?
Some people use cryptocurrency miners to heat their homes. It's certainly better than dumb resistive heating, but depending on various conditions it can cost more than installing a heat pump.
A dedicated heat pump would be cheaper if we consider heating to be the device's primary purpose. The idea is the computers are doing all sorts of useful things, and the heat is just a free byproduct of that activity.
Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#26I don't understand how a server (the "washing-machine-sized datacenter") can heat up any fraction of a swimming pool appreciably. Wouldn't it be a few kW tops?
This washing machine sized box draws 50kW of power. It wouldn't be able to heat up a cold swimming pool very much, but it would be enough to keep a pool that's already hot at a stable temperature.
Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw on TV a long time ago that a funeral home's "energy" (burning bodies) was used to heat homes somewhere in Europe. We can just use data centers for heating too...maybe turn around all these protests against them
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: "It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks, and become one with all the people."
Doesn't "tanks" imply some sort of composting operation, rather than burning bodies?
Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#28What a useless article! I found some actual information here:
https://www.techspot.com/news/97995-data-center-uses-waste-h...
The "data center" produces about 28 kW of heat and the swimming pool has cut its gas bill by 62%. They are saving US$24,000 per year.
Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#29Re: Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
#30All data centers that are in controversial areas should offer free heated swimming pools for the neighborhood. You could add a giant pool complex as a percentage or two of the cost of a big data center.
Surely it's just cheaper to build further away from residential areas? For this to work you'd need to be close to residential areas, but that's where you get the most NIMBY opposition. And if the datacenter is in the middle of some industrial park, who would want to drive 30 minutes to an industrial park to have a swim?