[HN Gopher] QTS refits Dutch datacenter to warm thousands of hom...
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QTS refits Dutch datacenter to warm thousands of homes with waste
heat
Author : pseudolus
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-12-21 12:27 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| cromulent wrote:
| Helsinki did one of these back in 2009 and continue to add more.
| It's a good fit in Northern Europe.
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/20/helsinki...
| wcoenen wrote:
| > _The heat captured is then dumped into the city 's district
| water system_
|
| Uhm, no, that would mean people couldn't get cold water anymore.
|
| The heat is distributed through pipes dedicated to heat
| distribution, separate from the water supply. The pipe network is
| called "Warmtenet Noordwest".
|
| edit: perhaps they meant that the entity maintaining these pipes
| is the same as the one maintaining the water supply? Could have
| been phrased more clearly.
| FredPret wrote:
| It could be that _district water system_ refers to the district
| _heating_ system, and not the tap water system
| contravariant wrote:
| >Doing so required the construction of a specialized plant, which
| captures and concentrates the heat generated by the datacenter
| before distributing it via existing water pipes.
|
| I'm kind of curious how this is done. It must cost energy somehow
| otherwise this would be heat flowing from a cold to a warm
| reservoir.
| msandford wrote:
| Generally yes. There might be 5000l/min of 30c fluid but what
| you really want is 2500l/min of 60c fluid. So you use a
| refrigerant cycle to do that with the hot side going to
| district heating and the cold side going to the data center.
|
| It's very much like an air conditioner but with liquid.
| Kichererbsen wrote:
| Also known as a heat pump. Depending on the temperature lift,
| these can be very efficient. Low temperature district heating
| networks are an interesting thing to look into: Low
| temperature means the heat losses in the network are smaller
| (heat losses, if I remember correctly, are proportional to
| the temperature difference) and at the consumer side, a heat
| pump can lift it back up to the temperature required for a
| floor (or ceiling) heating. This is _way_ more efficient than
| an air-to-air heat pump or even an air-to-water heat pump.
| [Citation Required]
| akgerber wrote:
| Interestingly, some large buildings in NYC also use a "steam
| chiller" hooked into the city steam system to provide air
| conditioning: https://untappedcities.com/2021/07/09/new-york-
| city-steam-sy...
| plorg wrote:
| My university had its own combined cycle
| power/steam/chiller plant, although in structure you could
| think of it as a steam plant with generators and chillers
| that could be switched as needed. I would have guessed that
| a number of universities do, but my university had a
| relatively larger power systems program than others
| regionally.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Downtown Chicago has something similar, one of the largest
| chilling networks in North America.
|
| https://youtu.be/H50FNOgkpik
|
| Toronto, Canada also:
|
| https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/water-
| environment/e...
|
| Lots of opportunities for thermal efficiencies in dense
| urban areas.
| [deleted]
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