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New Data Center Will Heat Homes In London
1sockchuck writes "The heat generated by thousands of servers at the new Telehouse West data center in London will soon be used to heat nearby houses and businesses. The Greater London Authority has approved a plan in which waste heat from the colocation facility will be used in a district heat network for the local Docklands community. The project is expected to produce up to nine megawatts of power for the local community."
It's how we used to heat the offices neighboring our server room (and I'm sure many many people did it before I did). Glad to see them using it on a larger scale to save a bit of dosh.
I smell a new routing protocol that redirects traffic to the cold parts of the world
Ages ago (60s or early 70s), a large aluminum company built a new HQ building (in Richmond, IIRC). They ran the numbers on computer-cooling vs building-heating, and made the computers an integral part of the equation (downscaling the heating plant accordingly). You see where this is going...
As the move approached, the DP guys saw an opportunity, and canceled their PO to Armonk... opting instead for an Amdahl, I believe. Winter came, and people started wearing coats at their desks. My friend who worked there reported that they were hastily building a kluge auxiliary heating plant with insulated ducts running across a parking lot.
Of course, the Docklands project doesn't sound like it's making any assumptions about the amount of waste heat, just doing something useful with it. But I hadn't thought of that paleo-computing tale in decades and had to pass it along.
I hope you don't wind up with a cyst developing in your testicle like I did... and that was only 2 hrs a day on the train using a laptop for 3 months. Admittedly this laptop was a piece of shit that should never have been released with the name laptop, and it got so hot i often would have to shut the bastard down half way through the train ride home as it was going to burn my legs. HTH, HAND.
... wait, what?
What happens if the next generation of servers run 10 Degrees cooler?
It'll work all year round! You'll never feel cold in July ever again, and you may not even need to use your oven to make a roast.
Well, this is from the country that invented the "AGA", which is some kind of hybrid kitchen range/oven/furnace that burns fuel 24x7x365, and which has no temperature adjustment. I guess their theory is that they live in a chilly climate.
No they don't all burn fuel 24x7, the electric ones can use off-peak electricity (which is generally considerably cheaper) and so store the heat for use during the day (and only draw extra if they need to).
The heat given off by the AGA also saves the kitchen from needing separate heating (and more so depending on the size of the house).
Modern kettles do consume 3kW, they have these huge, flat elements that boil very fast.
It's actually more efficient, as less heat will be lost from the body of the kettle during the boil cycle, because it has less time.
so I gather they are converting the excess heat to electricity
No. AC heat is "low grade". That is it's a few degrees above ambient so it'd be wildly inefficient to try to generate electricity from it. Heat can be measured in Watts just as electricity can.
e.g.
A typical 1gW nuclear power station will produce about 2gW of heat for each 1gW of electricity (35% efficiency or so). This is "waste" heat, though of course, it could be used to power adsorption chillers or used for industrial processes or domestic space and water heating, usually it's pumped directly into an ocean or river. Our power infrastructure is highly inefficient, about 60% at the best power stations. Of the approx 40% of total energy which does get turned into electricity, most of this is used for stuff like Air Conditioning, which is simply heat management. Refrigeration, which is heat management. Space heating, which is heat management.
We spend a lot of our time and money simply moving heat around (which is what they're doing in the article). This would be less of a problem if we were better at insulating things, there's actually no reason that the nearby houses should even need this heat, it's simply poor design.
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Would it ever happen in the US? District heat is surely tantamount to communism?
It's interesting to note that district heat was a quite common at one time in the UK - especially on large local authority housing developments. It fell out of favour in a big way in the 70s and 80s because it wasn't controllable and was seemed to be expensive.
In many cases, the schemes were ripped out and replaced with individual gas boilers in each apartment.
Seems we're coming full circle.
Yesterday's high was 22C. Predicted high for today is only 16C.
I'm happy with a summer that means I can sit around outside without feeling uncomfortable, do some moderate exercise (eg play a sport) outside and not die, and have a home I can cool to a comfortable temperature for 95%+ of the time just by opening the windows.
A bit off-topic, but I was amused to find out that here in the UK so many people turn their kettles on at 7:30pm for a cup of tea that sometimes they have to bring online a link from the French power grid to supply the extra power; apparently there is a guy who has to keep watch every day at 7:30 and if the power generation levels become serious enough he brings the French link online.
From the article:
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.