UK Power Networks trials Thermify’s HeatHub boilers, swapping gas flames for clustered compute
Reusing heat from servers has gained momentum recent years, but UK Power Networks (UKPN) is taking an unusual approach: installing mini datacenters powered by Raspberry Pi hardware in customers homes to provide heating for families struggling with energy costs.
UKPN, which manages the “last mile” of cables and substations delivering electricity from the National Grid to customers in the South East of England, is piloting the project as part of its SHIELD (Smart Heat and Intelligent Energy in Low-income Districts) program.
This will equip participating households with solar and battery systems, while one-third will also receive the “HeatHub” system - a compact datacenter roughly the size of a large heat pump that replaces traditional gas boilers. […]
I’ve often thought about this, if you’re actually using the waste heat from a PC does that mean its basically 100% energy efficient?
This seems like a really cool idea, although I’m not quite sure what happens in the summer when all this compute power gets shut off
I’m not knocking this idea, but it seems like a common misconception that all heating is just waste. A heat pump, for example, gives more heat per unit of energy than just the basic one to one of resistant heating.
True but I guess the idea with this is we’re going to use servers anyway, might as well make use of the heat
It is solid logic, as long as you’re only utilizing heat that would have been produced anyway, independent of whether it’s used productively or not. It goes bad if you start justifying inefficient hardware for longer than you otherwise would have because of it.
100% efficient electric resistance heating (including computing) is somewhere around 1/5 to 1/3 as efficient as a heat pump. It’s also not necessarily better than gas heating, although that’s harder to directly compare.