this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
193 points (95.3% liked)

Technology

58727 readers
5194 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
193
What Happens When Facebook Heats Your Home (www.wired.co.uk)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
38 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Since 2020, Meta’s hyperscale data center — spanning 50,000 square meters on an industrial estate on the edge of the city — has been pushing warm air generated by its servers into the district heating network under Odense. That heat is then dispersed through 100,000 households hooked up to the system, with Meta providing enough heat to cover roughly 11,000.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So you're saying to just let the servers get as hot as they want and ignore it? What is this heat pump going to be heating?

If you don't have anything you are wanting to heat up, adding a heat pump doesn't help.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Modern heat pump systems are reversible, so you would be drawing the heat energy from the room and releasing it outside. During this exchange air is run over a compressed coolant which cools the air and reintroduces it back to the room.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's just called an air conditioner?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

An AC can only cool the home, while a heat pump can both cool and heat a home. They are different things, and worth looking into.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

During this exchange air is run over a compressed coolant which cools the air and reintroduces it back to the room

That's just an air conditioner. The difference between an air conditoner and a heat pump is that a heat pump has a reversal valve that allows the refrigerant to run backwards through the system.

My point is someone is using a whole bunch of words to say "I'd air-condition my server room". It's not exactly a ground breaking idea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

A heat pump still costs energy to run... And running it in reverse to cool a room is the exact same process as running an ac to cool a room. It's all phase change cooling which we've been doing for decades. The only possible innovation that could be had here is using the waste heat instead of just releasing it to the outside environment, but that requires wanting to heat something else while you need to cool the server room.