this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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Wish this kind of joined up thinking happened in places other than the Nordics.
Data centres and industry exist and dump heat all over the world. Putting it to use is a no brainer.
I think the Nordics is probably the only place capable of utilizing this system in the first place. It looks like they have a utility system that already centralizes heating for their communities. They basically have a hot water line that circulates through radiators located in all the buildings in the community. Facebook was able to hook their heat exchange to this system, so they didn't have to build any real infrastructure.
I'm not really sure how efficient this solution is, it really depends if their centralized system is a closed or open system. The water Facebook is pumping out is only 80 degrees, and has to be heated up to 170 by the utility company for service.
The problem is that while these servers produce a large volume of heated air, the intensity of that heat is very low, making it hard to exploit or preserve for transfer.
Germany has this concept implemented in a lot of places, too.
Ironically this results in some problems now. For example the city Salzgitter (100k inhabitants) is heated by the local steel plant – which currently transitions towards green steel. Their transition also leads to a shut down of their blast furnaces, leaving the inhabitants of Salzgitter out of heating.
No idea what their plan is to replace it, though.