Heata Offers UK Residents Free Hot Water In Exchange For Cooling Its Servers (tomshardware.com) 44
In exchange for installing one of Heata's water-heating server units in your home, the UK networking company will offer you free hot water for a year. Tom's Hardware reports: The unit doesn't replace your existing heating unit, it works alongside it -- providing some, but not all, of your hot water needs. According to the company, the unit will provide "a useful base load" of hot water, and can provide up to 4.8kWh of hot water per day, though the exact amount will depend on usage as well as other factors. Heata is obligated to provide a minimum of 2.5kWh per day. Heata estimates its hosts will save up to 200 pounds per year, based on average household hot water use.
Heata will take care of the installation, which takes under two hours and has been tested with British Gas engineers and checked to ensure it doesn't invalidate cylinder warranties with "a leading cylinder manufacturer." Not everyone will be eligible to join Heata's trial, of course -- Heata's unit is designed for vented domestic hot water cylinders with a diameter of 425 - 450mm, and there will need to be an adequate amount of clearance space around the unit for the installation. The unit will need both electricity and broadband to run. Heata will take care of the electricity via reimbursement: the electricity used to run the unit will be metered (visible to the host), and Heata will credit the host for the electricity used at 10% above the market rate.
It's not quite as clear how the broadband will be taken care of -- in Heata's FAQ on its trial signup page, it says that Heata will need to connect to your broadband to communicate with the units. While the company assures that "most of the time the unit will simply be sending some monitoring information (temperatures/fan speeds etc) back to base)," so you "shouldn't notice any impact," that's still not great from a privacy standpoint. [...] As for the server, you won't be able to access it or use it to mine crypto or whatever you were hoping to do with it. Heata sells its compute services to businesses looking for sustainable alternatives to data centers. The Heata trial lasts for one year, and may be extended, "depending on how things go." Heata says it will take care of removing the installed unit and re-insulating the section of the cylinder that the unit was attached to.
Heata will take care of the installation, which takes under two hours and has been tested with British Gas engineers and checked to ensure it doesn't invalidate cylinder warranties with "a leading cylinder manufacturer." Not everyone will be eligible to join Heata's trial, of course -- Heata's unit is designed for vented domestic hot water cylinders with a diameter of 425 - 450mm, and there will need to be an adequate amount of clearance space around the unit for the installation. The unit will need both electricity and broadband to run. Heata will take care of the electricity via reimbursement: the electricity used to run the unit will be metered (visible to the host), and Heata will credit the host for the electricity used at 10% above the market rate.
It's not quite as clear how the broadband will be taken care of -- in Heata's FAQ on its trial signup page, it says that Heata will need to connect to your broadband to communicate with the units. While the company assures that "most of the time the unit will simply be sending some monitoring information (temperatures/fan speeds etc) back to base)," so you "shouldn't notice any impact," that's still not great from a privacy standpoint. [...] As for the server, you won't be able to access it or use it to mine crypto or whatever you were hoping to do with it. Heata sells its compute services to businesses looking for sustainable alternatives to data centers. The Heata trial lasts for one year, and may be extended, "depending on how things go." Heata says it will take care of removing the installed unit and re-insulating the section of the cylinder that the unit was attached to.
GOD DAMN IT I WAS FUCKING JOKING! (Score:2)
This wasn't meant to be fucking advice.
Language Timothy... (Score:2)
;)
Perspective (Score:2)
And why not? Information processing itself consumes negligible power, which means that roughly 100% of the power consumed by a computer is then ejected as heat. May as well put that heat to use instead of spending even more electricity on HVAC to throw it away. Residential hot water is even rather cool by CPU standards (only about 50C), so no worries there.
4.8kWh = 4100 kcal, which when heating water from 10C (typical ground temperature) to 50C will be enough for ~100kg (=~100L) of water - enough for one
Smells like a scam (Score:2)
Greenwashing? Tax dodge?
Free hot water makes sense if electricity prices hit negative at night, and you need to dump excess power.
But no way is a server farm generating electricity from excess heat. it would be incredibly inefficient. Piping the hot water to neighbouring buildings might make sense, as done by factories and power plants in some countries.
So how did this non-story, with no answers, make it to slashdot front page? Is it a paid advert?
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Oh FFS, I cant read. Though they could have been clearer. They actually want to put a server in your water tank. Still sounds like a scam. Retail consumer electricity prices are way higher that for a server farm. And all those extra overheads! Still makes no sense.
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They actually want to put a server in your water tank.
It looks like they are going to put a big external heat sink on the server and bond that to the outside of your tank. That kind of makes sense but the economics of it, not so much.
Re: Smells like a scam (Score:2)
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The server farm(s) already exist.
They need a solution *now*
They do not want/need to build a new farm inside of the sea. /. - unbelievable. A *nerdy* news and all you noobs are: oh, why? Oh, never works!
Re:Smells like a scam (Score:4, Interesting)
Most tanks are insulated these days, so it'd take more work than just that. I was actually picturing something where the cold water line hits the server before continuing on into your tank. It'd work pretty good up in Alaska, getting fed water that is around 34F/2C. As long as you have a way to avoid condensation on stuff that shouldn't see condensation.
Looking at it, it replaces the bottom heating element. Which is pretty standard for alternate energy type setups.
Okay, quick primer on water heater(electric) operation: Most have 2 thermostats and heating elements. A top and a bottom. Water comes in the bottom of the tank, leaves out the top. Because the water isn't actually moving that much (ever tried to add hot water to a bath and ended up with too hot on the faucet side and too cold on the opposite end of the tub? Takes some work to mix it up), you get temperature gradients.
Anyways, the bottom element is intended to be the workhorse for heating up incoming water. Top element comes on when you draw enough water that the water at the top of the heater is cold enough to set the thermostat off, to get the water going out to the pipes up as much as possible to spec. In MOST installs, this shuts the bottom element off. Unless you have a spare 30Amp@240V circuit for your house(you must use a LOT of water if you need this).
So if you install an alternate energy source into the bottom, and let's face it, I don't think this thing would ever keep water hot enough to trip the thermostat saying "STOP!", you get mildly warmed water in the bottom of the tank, while the top element tops it off, and you just have a thermal gradient down to the bottom.
Hope you don't want too much hot water too quickly, because this is going to cut the hot water capacity of your tank substantially, limiting your surge capability a lot.
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The last line of the summary talks about re-insulating when they remove it, so I infer that they remove part of the insulation in order to bond the heatsink to the tank.
The diagram in TFA has a label "Alternative fuel sources can also be used as top-up or backup", so I think it supplements rather than replaces.
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Shouldn't be a problem - they're "wiring" it to a giant thermal buffering system - a.k.a. hot water heater. 4.8kWh is only enough energy to heat about 100L of water/day the 40C from ground temperature to typical residential hot-water temperatures.
Typical British home hot water consumption is about 30-50L (~10gal) per person per day, and recommended hot water heater sizes seem to be roughly enough to hold a full day's worth of hot water. So long as the household has at least 3 people consuming hot water th
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40C for your hot water? You probably have a lot of unhappy houseguests!
+40C not at 40C (Score:2)
He said "40C from ground temperature".
A quick google says that UK ground temperature is ~10C to start with, so this would be heating it to ~50C, which translates to 122F.
Would still probably generate some unhappy houseguests. Most homes prefer 140F, 60C, which would be an increase of 50C.
But 120F is a legit recommended setting for water heaters (to prevent injuries). But note: They can't recommend lower temperatures because then you could get legionnaire's disease from the water in your heater.
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You can shower with 60C - if the faucet is far enough away and the water has time too cool, before it hits you. ...
No one is taking a bath in 60C and talking after wards about it
On the other hand, you usually open cold and hot, and it mixes - perhaps you mean the hot one has to be reasonable hot for that.
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What I meant was that I literally googled water heater temperature [gopreferred.com]. Then converted the F to C.
120F is the "safety setting", 140F is default. But 120F assumes short pipes, and won't give a lot of homes sufficient hot water when they try to pull a bath on the opposite side of the house or whatever.
And yes, the water generally cools some when going through the piping, and most people DO mix the hot and cold. Part of the provisioning process for water heaters is that the water will get cold eventually, so yo
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My parents have one of these setups on their roof. They dont have a hot water unit anymore.
Then again we *are* in Australia with real sun and all that.
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Electricity must be dirt cheap in the UK.
Were I come from (W.Australia), resistive electrical heating is considered inefficient and expensive.
Water heating is mostly by gas, though heat-pumps are starting to be affordable.
Room heating has long since has heat pumps (reverse cycle aircon) replacing gas heating.
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It's a lot of overhead but on the other hand they are not paying anything for the building (maintenance or taxes) which they would in a server farm.
The inconsistency of connection would I think be the biggest problem for this working, with lots of consumer broadband being not very constant in speed.
It's using the heat from the server to warm water (Score:2)
Not generate electricity.
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So how did this non-story ...
And why is it a non-story? Just because you are not interested?
I'm interesated
ChatGPT is running amok (Score:4, Funny)
I typed was "invent a terrible business idea" and it came up with this.
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I signed up for the trial anyway, but have not heard anything back. Obviously it will get its won WiFi connection that is isolated from my LAN.
I'm willing to give it a go. I might get some free heat, or at worst they go bust an I probably get to keep the server. The only potential issue I can see is what they need to do to the water tank. If it's serious surgery and can't be restored easily I might decline, but from what I read it sounds like they have a decent solution for that.
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I took a look too... it requires a vented hot water system, and obviously space to put the server.
Vented systems are somewhat "old school", and are largely superseded by the unvented versions, which are more efficient. I have no idea what the average losses are from a vent, but my guess is I'm already saving a reasonable fraction of what they're offering.
Either way though, it's an interesting idea. However, people are a little bit skittish about letting their stuff live in the cloud as it is, if that "cloud
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if that "cloud" is actually a bit of space on the floor of the garage in an array of random people's houses, one wonders how many cloud customers would trust it? My guess is they have a compute-heavy client lined up for this workload
Exactly right. As long as your use case includes being able to reprocess a job if a server goes down, and it's legal for you to send the data to an unsecured server, then it seems viable... otherwise not so much.
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FYI, you probably need at least three people in your household to qualify - the mentioned 4.8kWh/day is enough to heat about 100L/day of water, about 2-3x the residential hot water use of a typical Brit.
I would assume they have no interest in installing and maintaining a system that can only run at 30-50% capacity.
Cloud&Heat (Score:3)
I guess now we have evidence that ChatGPT reads Slashdot, as this sounds a lot like "Cloud&Heat" from eight years ago.
"Germans Can Get Free Heating From the Cloud" [slashdot.org]
Posted by timothy on 2014-11-11
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Cryptominers are never that nice. (Score:2)
All they care about is screwing you over and their dorky girlfriend Caroline.
I mean care about her.
Not the screwing part.
They're just blowing Hot Air... (Score:3)
Maintenance. (Score:2)
"Heata sells its compute services to businesses looking for sustainable alternatives to data centers."
A data center is a single high-efficiency building not even designed for humans. It's designed to maximize the amount of computing power in a space. In other words, it already IS the sustainable alternative.
Joe Sixpack beating away on the stuck toilet valve down the hall from your "server" room, is one shitty hammer swing away from what I would NOT call "sustainable".
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A data center is a single high-efficiency building not even designed for humans. It's designed to maximize the amount of computing power in a space. In other words, it already IS the sustainable alternative.
Whether it's sustainable is determined by the energy source, but it's harder to be sustainable when you're just throwing energy away, and that's what most DCs do with the cooling load. There's nothing inherently sustainable about DCs.
And after the free year? (Score:2)
dreaming of efficiencies (Score:1)
also we should attach dynamo generators to treadmills and hamster wheels...
This seems to be a startup that is probably getting investment capital in a promise of making it big by finding efficiences, I mean in theory this sounds fantastic - have servers heating up water where water needs to be heated up.
However I have servers in a colo, I pay 4k/month to have them there in 2 racks, drawing about 7kW, having redundant uplinks, a battery bank and a large diesel generator as well as physical security of some
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Sounds like they're only talking 200W of servers (4.8kWh/day) in any given house. Which is what, a single pizza-box worth? Heck, there's (gaming) laptops that draw more power than that.
Physical maintenance will be a nightmare, but with a liquid-cooled fully solid-state system that should be... reduced anyway. How much of a typical server farm's budget goes to physical maintenance? My understanding is that hard drives are (were?) the big culprits, and SSDs reduced those failure rates roughly 20-fold. R
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Right, an electrical 4kW water tank would use 1-2 kW per hour for maybe 5 hours a day to heat up the water. These tanks have 2 thermal elements, one on top and one on the bottom, the bottom one keeps heating up the water, which then raises to the top, in case the water consumption is very high and the bottom element doesn't have enough time to heat up enough water at the consumption rate, the top element kicks in (while the bottom one turns off). If they were serious about it then, they would supply a cust
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Heh, nitpicking:
A 4kW water tank would use 4kW when operating. 4.5 and 5.5 kW are common, by the way. But actual daily usage depends on tank size and insulation(passive losses) and otherwise actual water use.
The common situation, if you start with a cold water tank(just installed it, it was off for a few weeks, etc...), the TOP element will operate first, until the top water in the tank is to temperature. This ensures that the water first out of the tank is to temperature.
Then, once the top is to tempera
Presumably it never generates excess heat? (Score:2)
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Most likely the node will go offline rather than try to waste water. For one, their schematic doesn't show any mechanism to do that, and installing one would likely cost as much as the server.
If the thing disconnects the bottom heating element in electric water heaters for the install, then it'll likely never be able to heat the water up to "cease operation" temperature.
wait a minute (Score:1)
Physics doesn't like a joke (Score:1)