New Data Center Will Heat Homes In London 204
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."
Re:What happens if the Data Center shuts down? (Score:4, Informative)
Heat!=power (Score:4, Informative)
As with anything written by a reporter, engineering details are all f'ed up.
"The project is expected to produce up to nine megawatts of power for the local community."
No, the project will probably pipe 9MW of heat from the server farm over to the housing complex. Hopefully they can use 9MW of heat continuously, summer and winter.
âoeThe energy savings will equate to boiling 3,000 kettles continuously,â
Um - that's a really funny way of thinking about saving energy. 9Mw/3000= 3kw/kettle. That's a hell of a kettle.
For anyone who thinks that running a computer in their house to heat it is clever, you would do a lot better (price AND CO2 wise) just running a furnace or your heat pump. Resistance heating is the WORST way to heat a house.
If you're going to be producing the heat anyway and can find a use for it like this, please do! Don't think that because you CAN use a computer for a heater means that it makes sense.
Efficiency of a heat engine (Score:4, Informative)
I suppose that they did investigate the matter, but I wonder how this works. It's clear that there are a lot of watts being dissipated in the datacenter, but the problem is that they are dissipated against room temperature air. In order to heat houses with that, you have to use a heat pump which converts a heat flow at room temperature into a 65 C water that can easily be transported over large distances.
Normally, an airconditioning works as a heat pump that absorbs the heat by evaporating refrigerant slightly below room temperature (say 10 C), then compressing it so that it can condense and release the heat in an outdoor radiator at 40 C (ambient temperature up to 35 C). An ideal heat engine would be able to do this with an efficiency of 313 K/(40 C-10 C) = 10, which means that in order to displace 10 W of heat, you need to put in 1 W of mechanical work. I believe that a practical air-conditioning heat pump has an efficiency of 4 or so. Now in order to release the heat against 65 C (condensor temperature 75 C) instead of 35 C, the efficiency would halve. The work that you have to put into this heat engine comes from a power plant which itself has only 35% efficiency. So the balance would be:
Standard datacenter:
Server heat production: P
A/C electricity consumption: 0.25*P
Heat from burning fuel in power plant: 3.75*P
Datacenter with residential heating:
Server heat production: P
Heat pump electricity consumption: 0.6*P
Heat output to homes: 1.6*P
(gain: 1.6*P) Heat in power plant: 4.8*P (extra cost: 1.05*P)
Net gain: 0.55*P. For that you have to do all the infrastructure of big insulated hot-water pipes to residential areas and special heat pumps. It's not clear to me that this will pay off (in money and in environmental cost).
Scaling up to combined heat and power (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anecdote (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, 100% of the energy is turned to heat, eventually.
Re:The best part? (Score:2, Informative)
Well, it was actuelly a Swede who invented the AGA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGA_cooker
KWK (Score:3, Informative)
this is called 'Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung' in German and warmte-kracht-koppeling in dutch. see also Combined Heat and Power or CHP.
Re:The best part? (Score:5, Informative)
I think there may have been 3 or more days of sun in August 2005.
Re:Humdity (Score:3, Informative)
London homes are also far less likely to be equipped with air conditioning than homes in Hong Kong or Australia, which is another reason for the discomfort.
Re:A cautionary thermal tale (Score:3, Informative)
That would be interesting, if you had bothered to say what DP, Armonk, or Amdahl is.
This site is for nerds. Nerds know these things, and don't have to be told. Armonk is where IBM used to build mainframes. Amdahl was a guy who designed mainframes for IBM, and who later went on to found a company of the same name which made mainframes which were compatible with IBM's mainframes.
IBM is a computer company.
Mainframes are a class of large computer, now rare.
Computers are programmable machines for processing data.
DP is an acronym for 'Data Processing'
Is there anything else you'd like to know?
Re:The best part? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, this is from the country that invented the "AGA" ...
The AGA was invented by a Swede, Dr. Gustaf Dalén. AGA is an abbreviation of Aktiebolaget Gasaccumulator.
Source. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Humdity (Score:3, Informative)
Not only lack of air conditioning but very different construction materials in the much older cities.
I live in the old town of Edinburgh myself, and the flat we're in retains heat at an amazing level. I'm not savvy on the exact materials used, but the stone is thick/dense enough to block out mobile phone signals the instant you step over the stairwell threshold. When its hot (25+ in Scotland :P) for more than a few days, the flat ends up being considerably hotter than the outside :/ If its left empty for a week in the winter, it'll take days of the central heating constantly on to take the chill out of the place.
All that said though, it takes more than a strong wind to knock our houses over :) and the fire that ravaged the old town a few years back left surprisingly little structural damage compared to the property damage.
Seattle Steam (Score:4, Informative)
Pretty much every building big and small in Belltown, Downtown, First Hill and parts of Capitol Hill are heated by one of these "communist" steam companies [seattlesteam.com].
Sadly, most of the 1930's brick apartments used to have steam heat. Most were not part of Seattle Steam, but used their own private boiler. Like with you, these were ripped out in the 70's and 80's and replaced with (now very expensive) electric heaters or if you were lucky some big fan with a gas flame at the bottom. Why? Probably so they could lower your rent not having to include heat (or more likely, just keep rent the same and pocket the difference). Course, the heat they provided would have been cheaper overall... electric heat is extremely expensive.
I was lucky enough to live an building that still had "free heat" and it was great. My electric bill was only $15 a month. Plus the radiators would leak steam just enough to humidify the apartment in the winter. Cats love them too because they can sleep on top of ones that have shielding.
Interestingly, the landlady of that apartment said the building used to have gas stoves as well but those were also replaced in the 70's and 80's with electric ranges. Why? So they didn't have to take on the gas bill either. Keep in mind they didn't have individual meters for gas in the 1930's and it be almost impossible to "re-wire" all the gas-lines to meter them.
Typically the only communal things left in apartments are sewer, water and garbage.
PS: For some reason they liked to paint over the mahogany trim in the 80's as well. That and they had a penchant for carpeting over hardwood floors. I swear, nothing good came out of the 80's whatsoever... not a god damn thing.
PPS: Almost all of the old 1930's apartments still have their original iceboxes [wikipedia.org].
Re:A cautionary thermal tale (Score:3, Informative)
No it isn't, it is just the initials. An acronym is a word made up of initials, like NASA. And you didn't say what OP meant.
BTW, there is a difference between Nerd and Wanker. You appear to fall into the latter category.