Comment by mrexroad

16 days ago

> This "waste heat" system is a closed loop of efficiency. The 60+ kilowatts of heat energy produced by a storage cluster is not a byproduct to be eliminated but a resource to be harvested.

Are there any other data centers harvesting waste heat for benefit?

9 comments

mrexroad

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cloud-oak  16 days ago

The EU mandates that all large data centres built/commissioned from July this year will make use of waste heat:

https://www.twobirds.com/en/insights/2024/germany/rechenzent...

  • londons_explore  15 days ago

    Sounds like part of the reason all the biggest AI data centers are being built outside the EU...

    • Dr4kn  15 days ago

      It's more like there are a lot of building restrictions and fines. Overloading the local power systems. Building illegal turbines.

      If you can get paid on your waste heat why wouldn't you like that?

      1 reply →

miduil  16 days ago

Yes, plenty - sometimes data centers are built together with apartment or office complexes for this particular purpose. Unfortunately that already pinpoints the core limitation, due to the low-temperature of the data centers. The higher the temperature difference is, the more affective heating becomes - with air cooled systems it requires preparation to ensure that can be used for heating.

Also data centers need physical space, and often - you need heating where there is not a lot of space (cities), and for "district heating" you need higher temperatures usually.

stingraycharles  16 days ago

I know that ~ 15 years ago we were already using datacenters in The Netherlands that were used to heat houses in a city.

I do vaguely remember that the economics of it all were not great, but it’s definitely a thing for quite a while already.