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Something I have been wondering: Why don't data centres use the excess heat for a sort of energy recuperation, turning at least some of it back into electricity?
All 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.
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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?
An outdoor heated pool that’s open all winter in a cold climate would be a destination worth a drive. A rather decadent use of energy otherwise, it’d be a good use for waste heat. There’s prior art in the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, a destination spa that uses water from a geothermal power plant.
Is 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?
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Rather than pools specifically, maybe they could design District Heating systems.
I was thinking more like if they externalized the heat release of the data centers enough they might even be able to heat the whole globe!
All 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.
I feel like this is one of those things that sounds good, but it's not. It's probably cheaper to build it far away from residential areas, and it's probably better for the people living there to not live too close to a data center.
All 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.
I feel like this is one of those things that sounds good, but it's not. It's probably cheaper to build it far away from residential areas, and it's probably better for the people living there to not live too close to a data center.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about in swimming centers in England but I do know YMCAs in the US often have budgets that look like: - Revenue: $25.01M - Expenses: $25M So "small savings" like this can add up for them.
This is mostly just due to how nonprofits work. If you have excess revenue, you can’t return it to shareholders so you might as well spend it on mission-oriented activities.