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posted by hubie on Thursday January 19 2023, @05:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the waste-not-want-not dept.

Germany wants to force its power-hungry data centers to harness excess heat for warming residential homes — an effort which the industry warns is likely to fall flat:

The country has become one of the largest global hubs for data centers thanks to its clear data protection and security laws. Politicians are now trying to re-purpose some of their controversial excess heat to improve efficiency in light of the energy crisis.

While in theory an innovative way to reduce the industry's immense carbon footprint, experts have pointed to a flaw in the government's proposal expected to be passed this month: potential recipients of waste heat are not being compelled to take it.

[...] "Data center operators are mostly ready and willing to give away their waste heat," according to Ralph Hintemann, senior researcher at the data center lobby group Borderstep. "The challenge here is finding someone who can use that heat economically."

What's at stake for Europe's largest economy is that it either risks scaring off IT investments and slowing its efforts to digitize, or falling behind on climate goals. The energy efficiency law being prepared by the government aims to save some 500 terawatt-hours of energy by 2030 — pegged in part on a requirement to reuse at least 30% of a new data center's heat by 2025.

Not a new idea, as demonstrated by this article from almost a decade ago.

Original article on Bloomberg but javascript and all...


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday January 19 2023, @07:48PM

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Thursday January 19 2023, @07:48PM (#1287596)

    Computer equipment produce two things: data and waste heat. The former is a lot easier to move around than the later.

    That's why I like the opposite approach: put hot servers where you want to use their heat and move the data where it's needed over the internet instead of the other way round. A few companies [hwcooling.net] propose to install servers in your home and sell CPU cycles to third parties who need computational power as you need heat, and give you a cut of the revenue generated on the computation. I like that idea a lot.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by SingularityPhoenix on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:00PM (9 children)

    by SingularityPhoenix (23544) on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:00PM (#1287598)

    Energy density is a failing point for many things. While the data centers do produce heat that could heat homes, the temperature is low, so the amount of material you have move to transfer that heat makes it difficult (expensive).

    In the same vein, harnessing energy from ocean waves is in the same boat. Yes, there is a lot of energy there, but collecting it is a lot harder.

    if you'd eat 5 oz of chips where they're in a small bag, would you still be interested if they're distributed evenly across your entire house (assume your house is sterile). Yes, the chips are there, and they're still chips. They're just not worth the hassle.

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:06PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:06PM (#1287600)

      They're just not worth the hassle.

      My dog argues otherwise.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2023, @10:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2023, @10:30PM (#1287635)

        > My dog argues otherwise.

        Yeah, for now. Just wait until your dog gets smart and unionizes. Chip cleanup won't be free anymore after that.

    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:24PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:24PM (#1287603)

      I agree in part. Many homes have "heat pumps". In winter the somewhat warm air from the computers can be easily (passively ducted) into the intake for the heat pump.

      Very advanced systems use circulating water (and antifreeze) loops to carry heat and cold, so you could have air to liquid heat exchangers to collect the server heat.

      Small data center I admin has HVAC vents in the server room. In winter we close the room's hot air supply vent, and keep the intake vent open. In summer we close both vents and allow a window AC to do the cooling.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Rich on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:30PM (3 children)

      by Rich (945) on Thursday January 19 2023, @08:30PM (#1287604) Journal

      In the same vein, harnessing energy from ocean waves is in the same boat. Yes, there is a lot of energy there, but collecting it is a lot harder.

      Has anyone ever calculated, if all energy needs were powered from that, how long it would take to de-orbit the moon?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:11PM (1 child)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:11PM (#1287615) Journal

        Why should wave power de-orbit the moon? Waves are driven by wind, not by the moon. Maybe you confuse it with tidal power?

        Anyway, tidal power won't de-orbit the moon either. If anything, it will increase the moon's orbit. The tidal energy comes from the earth's rotation.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:35PM

          by Rich (945) on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:35PM (#1287624) Journal

          I meant tidal power, but I was unter the naive assumption that the moon just drags the tides along and completely neglected earth rotation, which should be bloody obvious, especially because as a kid I spent many holidays on seaside islands and we had daily tide plans.

          I got my refresher here: https://public.nrao.edu/ask/why-is-the-moon-moving-away-from-the-earth-when-orbiting-black-holes-ultimately-collide/ [nrao.edu]

          Earth’s rotation causes this tidal bulge to occur in a position which is slightly ahead of the Moon in its orbit around the Earth, which causes some of the energy of the Earth’s rotation to get transferred to the tidal bulge via friction. This friction results in a small amount of energy transfer into the Moon’s orbital motion, resulting in the Moon being pushed to an orbit which is further away from the Earth [...] at a rate of about 3.78 cm per year.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by pe1rxq on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:20PM

        by pe1rxq (844) on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:20PM (#1287620) Homepage

        Since the moon is beyond a synchronus orbit the tidal effect is actually making it move further out.
        This happens because a rotation of the Earth (23h 56m) is shorter than an orbit of the moon (27 days)

        So you would have to harness ocean energy in a pretty funky way to de-orbit the moon.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2023, @08:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2023, @08:13AM (#1287707)
      The other issue is some places (e.g. greenhouses) might want the heat in winter BUT maybe not so much in summer.

      A good place to dump the heat might be if you're some sort of zoo or similar and need to warm up a lake to tropical levels.
    • (Score: 2) by ledow on Friday January 20 2023, @06:04PM

      by ledow (5567) on Friday January 20 2023, @06:04PM (#1287756) Homepage

      Also: You'll want to remove more heat in the summer, when people want to use less heat. And less heat in the winter, when people want to use more heat.

      They are basically two things with requirements which are at odds with each other.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:13PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:13PM (#1287617) Journal

    <no-sarcasm>
    Moving heat out and cold return air in to a data center would seem to open new avenues of attack.
    </no-sarcasm>

    Can bits be exfiltrated with that waste heat?

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 1) by istartedi on Thursday January 19 2023, @11:23PM (2 children)

      by istartedi (123) on Thursday January 19 2023, @11:23PM (#1287642) Journal

      An increase in waste heat from a particular data center could be correlated with an increase in network traffic. It's not exactly exfiltrating bits, but it's profiling traffic and if you can correlate it to something interesting than you might be able to discover which data center to target--e.g., if some kind of intelligent missile defense AI is concentrated at a data center and you don't know which one, *and* if you can profile waste heat from all the data centers during a missile attack, then you can increase the odds that the agents you have behind the lines will disable the correct data center before the next attack.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2023, @04:04PM (1 child)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2023, @04:04PM (#1287748) Journal

        Suppose by manipulating the amount of waste heat by manipulating cpu performance, you could exfiltrate data at a rate of, say, one bit per hour. 24 bits in a day.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday January 20 2023, @05:33PM

          by istartedi (123) on Friday January 20 2023, @05:33PM (#1287754) Journal

          If you've already got something installed on the machine, it seems like there are easier ways to get data. It could be an inside job, and I suppose a sysadmin scheduling CPU intensive jobs according to a schedule pre-arranged with their handlers would work. The bandwidth could be very small--a pre-agreed pattern that signals "this is the one", then you extract your agent and light the place up, unless you're Russia then you light everything up including your agent, because they don't care about anybody.

          --
          Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Sjolfr on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:59PM

    by Sjolfr (17977) on Thursday January 19 2023, @09:59PM (#1287631)

    Even small datacenters produce a good amount of heat. Just do some math with the tonnage of cooling even 2000 square foot datacenters, with dense blade servers and fiber arrays, require to keep servers cool. See - CRAC units.

    Is the infrastructure cost, and maint., worth salvaging all that waste heat? Doubt it. Depends on where it is and how desperately heat is needed I suppose. I kinda like the idea of putting servers near homes for this purpose, but having then in homes opens up other problems like energy density, outages, access, liability, insurance, etc.. I wouldn't want a rack of someone else's servers in my basement.

    Maybe we should start planning communities around dacacenters, especially in cold climates.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 19 2023, @10:00PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday January 19 2023, @10:00PM (#1287632)

    What's at stake for Europe's largest economy is that it either risks scaring off IT investments and slowing its efforts to digitize, or falling behind on climate goals.

    I'm familiar with what "digitize" normally means, but what is this referring to? Much of Germany's economy is still paper-based??

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
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