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AssOfficer t1_jc66sxd wrote

If a "washing machine sized data center" can heat a pool to 30°C then holy hell what are we doing with actual data centers????

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AltharaD t1_jc6ahbt wrote

Air conditioners. Lot of money is spent cooling them.

https://dataspan.com/blog/data-center-cooling-costs/

According to that link 1% of the world’s electricity goes on cooling data centres. That’s an enormous amount.

If we can use the heat generated by data centres more effectively (and consequently reduce cooling costs) then that could be a massive win.

Edit: this link shows how a larger data centre can provide hot water to over 10% of Denmark’s third largest city.

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internetcommunist t1_jc6ko68 wrote

That’s insane. Makes me feel way less bad about my desktop tower lmao

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danielv123 t1_jc78np9 wrote

Rack power density has been balooning the last few years. Typical power consumption was ~5kw per 42u rack for like a decade. Now we are nearing 20kw average. Compute oriented systems for AI workloads and whatnot pack 60kw+ per rack. A lot of older datacenters have to run half full racks because their central cooling system can't deal with the heat of full ones anymore.

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hung_like__podrick t1_jc7fdhb wrote

We’re going to be reaching the limit of what traditional cooling methods like CRAC units are capable of with those densities. I hope to see more liquid cooling applications or other solutions like rear doors that aren’t as prevalent as traditional CRACs.

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RuKiddin06 t1_jc8nwa3 wrote

I used to for for a company that uses self enclosed cabinets to avoid the use of floor AC units and isolate intense workloads. Scalematrix / DDC. Super interesting compared to raised floor. From what I can tell it's still kinda expensive, but the idea is promising.

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hung_like__podrick t1_jc8p3q6 wrote

Oh nice. I’m familiar with Scalematrix. Raised floors aren’t as prevalent as they used to be and honestly it’s for the better.

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RuKiddin06 t1_jc8pgi4 wrote

Oh cool! Yeah, having now worked in a switch facility for another company, as well as raised floor sites, concrete slab, and cooling similar to these is the way forward.

Liquid door also comes to mind.

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CharacterOtherwise77 t1_jc713r0 wrote

It's not a massive win, it's just some efficiency while combusting millions of tons in the process anyway.

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lovejac93 t1_jc76bvp wrote

If you utilized the heat from all data centers to provide heat elsewhere, you’d reduce the amount spent to heat those places.

It’s still a massive win

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CharacterOtherwise77 t1_jc7cnz8 wrote

That sounds like an enormous waste of resources. We don't have an efficient way to transport heat, it travels through matter.

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Lumi5 t1_jc7dtub wrote

In Finland we do have a pretty efficient way of transporting heat. It's called district heating and plenty of houses in larger towns are getting their heating through that. Basically it's very well insulated water pipes going around the city. Actually 46 percent of residential and service buildings in Finland are heated by that.

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CharacterOtherwise77 t1_jc7f8w1 wrote

But you also get brutal winters, so it was out of necessity not just efficiency. NOT having heat could be deadly there

With server farms they create heat, it's the opposite problem that exacerbates itself. Then they use more power to cool them which creates more heat, more refuse.

Should we dig up all the concrete roads and run pipes across buildings? That will never happen.

We should be making servers that run cooler by making the chips a certain size, and by creating chips which are more specialized rather than having 16 core computers that can do everything.

The same server that runs google can run Doom, that makes no sense to me.

Also I love Finland and bless you all.

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Lumi5 t1_jc7h98e wrote

Converting current infrastructure to accommodate that might not be very feasible. But planning future projects with this in mind is completely reasonable. We already have a data center in Helsinki that's providing heating for up to 20 000 apartments.

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Whaines t1_jc7jq4u wrote

Well if the data center is in use it’s not wasted. It would be more wasteful to use more energy on AC to cool it down than to use that generated heat for something useful.

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abark006 t1_jc6tdhg wrote

It can’t. That’s a major exaggeration. Maybe if it’s indoors well insulated and you leave it on for a long ass time.

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danielv123 t1_jc79iwb wrote

A washing machine is about 39" according to google. Nvidias DGX H100 systems use 11kw and are 14" tall. That is definitely in the ballpark of the pool heaters I find on google for pools of size 40 - 120m3.

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Tanedra t1_jc7czxg wrote

I note that it's not just a basic data store, they're using it for AI and machine learning - these are extremely intensive activities and it's very plausible for that to generate a ton of heat.

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Great68 t1_jc7u5d2 wrote

Yeah I'm a bit skeptical as well, maybe I just need more details. The last pool mechanical system I worked on was sized for ~300kW of heat for a simple 6 lane, 25m pool.

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Odd_so_Star_so_Odd t1_jc7pcwe wrote

Parts of the world seeks to push them towards heating homes instead of wasting the heat/burn more energy to cool the servers. It's an uphill battle though as these big tech companies prefer a race to the bottom where they rather pay to greenwash themselves than make an actual difference. As I understand it this is a developing field to optimize and increase energy efficiency of big data centers. They can often offset their carbon footprint by providing heating to the towns they're built in, if only they're willing and it don't cost them too much...

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who_you_are t1_jc8jldo wrote

Knowing them they will charge us for the heat they produce... Even if we are the one to pay for the infrastructure...

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kelvin_bot t1_jc66tgh wrote

30°C is equivalent to 86°F, which is 303K.

^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)

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alexlarrylawrence t1_jc8ij1y wrote

I work in manufacturing and just competed a quote for valves to run cooling water for one data center. The quote was over 2.5 million dollars.

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