Comment on Home heating from datacentres - good use of waste energy or a waste of money? | TechRadar
JakenVeina@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Seems more like such waste heat should be recovered and fed back into the system, to reduce energy consumption for the facility as a whole. If there’s enough waste heat to meaningfully talk about transferring it to homes via water or steam, surely there’s enough to make some electricity.
I sure don’t want Amazon or Microsoft involved in the utilities businesses, as another commenter pointed out.
The data centres are trying to get rid of the heat!
Are you proposing converting the heat to electricity? That would require a huge amount of heat pumps (to concentrate the heat) and a turbine hall (the smaller, the less efficient). You’d be talking about 20% efficiency at most, probably more like 10% for the total system efficient.
Compare that to a good district heating system which is typically 90% efficient.
UPGRAYEDD@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Heat isnt a great generator of electrical power. At least not at lower temperatures ( below boiling, for steam generation). It also suffers from conversion loss. Anytime you convert energy, there is a loss. Using the heat directly avoids another conversion.