Heat from data center used to warm Swiss swimming pool
By Darren Murph 
posted Apr 3rd 2008 4:04PM
posted Apr 3rd 2008 4:04PM
[Via FashionFunky, thanks Yash]
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And then you could cover the pool and use the steam to power a generator that is attached to the computer... If only.
Another perpetual motion machine that works only if your not looking at it or filming it.
I know it's what the IBM article says too... but you can't use 2,800 Megawatts per year. The unit's don't work... it's probably 2,800 Megawatt-hours per year. (Which would be an average usage of 320,000 watts)
The unit mismatch is like saying you drive 65 miles per hour per year... it's only useful to say you drove a certain number of miles or drive at an average rate... watts/year as well as mph/year would actually represent accelerations, and are useful measures in different ways than most people think... (e.g. world energy consumption could be said to be increasing by so many watts/year or a spaceship might accelerate by so many MPH/year but you cant "use" or "move" in units of watts/year or mph/year)
Here's hoping the press release guy at IBM isn't tasked with any real work...
I've been doing that for years, heating up my room's air using my computer's heat, summer and winter.
Yeah, but it's cheaper to run a gas furnace than electricity for heat (more BTUs per dollar). Also, more thermodynamically efficient. Hence, natural gas furnaces.
Are you suggesting that IBM should stop the Data Center and just provide gas for community pool?
Unlike the toilet-flush water-electric generator we saw on engadget a couple of weeks ago, that bleeds the smallest bit of "free" energy, this setup ACTUALLY makes thermodynamic sense.
That's a great solution. The pool where I used to live in Hobart uses the heat in the sewerage pipes that pass nearby to heat the pool... sort of strange when your in the pool!
lol my xbox 360's been doing that too! damn things like a space heater :P
My PC also doubles as an air filter, when my CPU's average temperature goes red from all the collected dust I know it's to vacuum it. I tell ya it's way more efficient than my Airconditioner
We need to create a datacenter to calculate how much gas we need for heating up the pool!
Sorry to be irrelevant, but I'm testing to see if engadgets reply system works in this thread.
Jorda: The reply system is really fucked-up here.. i'm sorry to tell ya.
NOpe. not working.
Or is it? Muhaha
Now that's not nice. He's going to go insane trying to figure out how to post a reply correctly.
Are they using a data center to heat a pool or are they using a pool to cool a data center? Hmmmm....
Didn't some guy use his pool to watercool his PC's? I'd suggest that they try to do that, but a small water leak in a data center would be a horrible, horrible nightmare for their IT staff.
"rather than stressing over the choice between solar or hydroelectric power sources to keep that green data center running"
Heating a swimming pool is a neat idea, but I actually do power my servers with solar power. No really. I also put in ductwork to suck hot air out of the server room and pump it to the entrances of the building during the winter, to help keep the cold out of the office. Saves my company a couple thousand a year in electricity for the servers and a dedicated AC unit.
http://www.jbdg.com/solar.html
While, it is true that natural gas provides a btu of heat for less money than electricity. The benefit here is that IBM is using the Electricity anyway and has heat created as a byproduct. Using this system IBM saves money and energy on air conditioning and the pool saves money and energy heating the water. This is an excellent idea and a great use of the heat created in the data center.
One splash from the pool, and *poof* goes a whole rack of blades!
And I'm quite certain it would be cheaper to heat the pool with gas rather than with electricity also.
But this isn't about using electric heat to warm the pool or the parent posters room. This is about reuse of waste heat. These computers are going to be running for whatever prupose they were built for, not for heating pools or rooms, but if the waste heat from them can be used to offset the energy that would otherwise be required to heat a pool (or a room), it is most definitely a gain in energy usage efficiency.
However, I'll gladly accept your line of reasoning as relevant when you can show me how to run my computer efficiently off gas. :)
"Why is this pool so warm? BILLY! I TOLD YOU TO STOP PISSING IN THE POOL."
"It's the computers, mom, I swear!"
water is so cold today! I'll run infinite loop on few racks...
It's most likely referring to the load. I know here in Virginia a new high-density data center was projected to require a 5,000 MW load which would mean that just like how the power supply for your computer is rated at 300 w or 500 w or whatever. The problem statement is: "the data center is expected to create 2,800 megawatts of wasted heat per year when operating at full capacity" And as everybody knows watts are a measure of electricity not heat. BTUs would be a better fit but probably harder to predict...
Lol.
No....read my post above. It's actually a very GOOD idea. But electric heaters for the SOLE purpose of heat is a BAD idea.
That said, it's the inefficiency of the computer that makes it a good idea. Improving the efficiency of the computer, reducing excess heat, and then supplying the remaining needed heat to the pool with gas would increase the overall efficiency.
Hey the reply system isn't working. Jordan was right...
Just click on the date of the comment to go to the seperate thread and reply there.
Just make sure not to build the pool OVER the data center.
@Brandon: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
So are they just piping the hot air out to warm up the pool? Or are they planning on having liquid cooled servers?
I realize 8 lines of copy is rather a lot for you to read in one sitting, but I suggest you examine the phrase "heat exchanger" before asking stupid questions.
@ Dave
Heat exchangers can be air-to-liquid, liquid-to-liquid, or air-to-air. So what "heat exchanger" implies is neither obvious in the posting nor in your comment.
Liquid-to-liquid heat exchangers offer the best heat transfer, so that's what they SHOULD use. Since they can't likely use the pool water directly as the coolant on the CPU, that'd be the best way to go. Although they could additionally use an air-to liquid exchanger outside of the computers to gain even more radiant heat.
What would be so bad about that? Heat rises, and building the pool above the server room would make a lot of sense.
Yes but it's not like I am reaping the heat from my multiple PCs for the express purpose of heating my home. I am utilizing waste from electrical resistance, the by product that would be present during the use of my computer anyway, to fill a need. It's win win, I still get to use my computer(s) just as I normally would AND I get a warm room.
This was supposed to be a reply to "looseintheduece" with the comment:
"Yeah, but it's cheaper to run a gas furnace than electricity for heat (more BTUs per dollar). Also, more thermodynamically efficient. Hence, natural gas furnaces."
I doubt that datacenter is going to be using 5GW either... that would be using all of the electricity of 5 nuclear power plants. That single datacenter would be using .5% of the entire grid of the USA... (that would be the power of ~50 million quad-core processors)
It's going to be using 5GW-hr or ~570kW avg.
Yeah, but can you play doom on your gas furnace.
Yeah, but can you play doom on your gas furnace.
what's the big deal? ... I can warm up the pool as well.
how is drainage able to reply to his mistakenly not-replied reply to something that was originally probably supposed to be a reply?
That's exactly how I'd describe it. ..from a homebrew perspective, of course.
Do I need a space heater? No. Will I buy a 360? ...No.
Good job engadget! Your code is borked /again/!
*golf clap*
I run a bunch of outdated computers solely for the purpose of staying warm.
@ben
so is that what you do with all your computers running microsoft?
GO APPLE!!!
sorry, trying to figure out which type of fanboy is more idiotic. i'm beginning to think fanboy anything is idiotic. or maybe that's just my 8 year high school education talking.
DakStaka @ Apr 3rd 2008 4:32PM:
"That's a great solution. The pool where I used to live in Hobart uses the heat in the sewerage pipes"
Are you saying that other people's warm poop heats your swimming water?
What I don't understand: why talk about 'green' data centers, post an image of a data center, and not use the original image that contains the 'green' bit?
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/attachment/21514.wss?fileId=ATTACH_FILE2&fileName=_MG_9056gr4.jpg
Or are ya scared IBM finds out you're stealing their images without putting a nice reference on it? ;-)
Nice ... now the datacenter manager can proudly say "my watercooling system is full of chicks in bikini".
Or fat men in speedos
@John: "And as everybody knows watts are a measure of electricity not heat."
We do? I thought it was a unit of power.
While it may be more thermodynamically efficient... I'll take the computer to play with over the gas-fired furnace any day.
@Anonymoose
so is that what you do with all your computers running microsoft?
GO APPLE!!!
sorry, trying to figure out which type of fanboy is more idiotic. i'm beginning to think fanboy anything is idiotic. or maybe that's just my 8 year high school education talking.
8 years in high school?
that must have been fun
This isn't gizmodo, use the reply button.
When it isn't working, click on the date of the comment to to go the seperate thread and reply there.
I also use my 360 to heat my hands while I play, and then I can keep the house cool...I don't mind it being cold except when my hands get numb :P
that is the single greatest idea ever!
Watts are not a unit of electricity but of energy, which heat is as well. You can measure heat in watts. The other thing is, you can't say "megawatts per year", since it would be the same as, say, "horsepower per mile" - you have a unit mismatch. They probably meant megawatt-hours per year, that would work and, as mentioned above, would recalculate to an average load of 320 kilowatts, which seems to be OK for a data center in my eyes.
oh great, reply system doesnt work... sorry for in that useless comment :(
Correct John.
The last time I checked there was a real solid relationship between power and energy (Joules).
Whenever current flows in a conductor, power is dissipated in the resistance of the conductor in the form of heat.
NO SHIT!
@Looseintheduece
YEa, but Gas furnaces can't surf da web or type replies on Engadget, hence the Computer.
Whatever does more things at once trumps all.
IT already happens. They're called Natural Gas Power Plants.
exactly...
I understand that the data center in the Australian Parliament House (down the road from where I live) in Canberra does this.
DataCentre generates heat which heats the pool that the workers and politicians use.
Sounds like a nice gain in efficiency to me... And it has been running for years.
awesome!
Wow.. this is going to be a steamy affairs...
Or using the 'datacentre' to build a massive WMD that will launch from the pool a la thunderbird 1?
I'm quite sure i replied to a different post. I even clicked the date and got the right comment upp in display only, but still my comment ended up elsewhere!
WTF! Now it happened again but to my own comment.. it's SICK!
It's nothing new to owners of Prescott CPUs, they too have been doing this for half a decade now.
IBM = Innovations ByMistake.
atleast in this case.
watt is a unit of power in general = joule per sec( so basically 1 unit of energy per second ). Its not a unit of electricity specifically.
BTU's would be hard to calculate and kinda inaccurate till they run studies on the working transfer system.
energy wasted as heat from computer systems is much easier to calculate though. it would just require calculating the electrical resistance of the entire system and they would know the current used in the system. with multi-fold simplification its just I.R². Obviously their calculated estimations would be slightly more complicated, but not much.
I realize 8 lines of copy is rather a lot for you to read in one sitting, but I suggest you examine the phrase "heat exchanger" before asking stupid questions.
oops, the commenting is a bit messed up, the above was meant to be somewhere else - sorry!
Wow.... nice idea to actually use the heat emitted by the servers. It's almost like me using my laptop as a heater when my hands are freezing.
Pool or pond, the pond would be good for you.
Yeah, that is annoying when people make unit errors like that.
Everyone who works below are naked!
prepare for a cold swim if they ever upgrade to energy-efficient computers down the line...