

Data furnaces arrive in Europe: Free heating, if you have fibre Internet - riffraff
http://arstechnica.co.uk/business/2015/05/data-furnaces-arrive-in-europe-free-heating-if-you-have-fibre-internet/

======
ville
There's a datacenter in Helsinki that pushes its heat to a district heating
system.

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/20/helsinki-...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/20/helsinki-
data-centre-heat-homes)

~~~
jsingleton
Nice article. It certainly works at scale because of the economies. I think
this distributed system has potential but there are some issues. There are
also some things they could do to make it better if the trial is a success.

Using resistive heating (which is what this is) is not very efficient (even if
it's a by-product). A better way to heat your home is to not waste power and
use it instead to run an electric heat pump (which are _over_ 100% efficient).
There is a good analysis in the "Mythconceptions" section at the end of
chapter I.11 of the excellent "Sustainable Energy — without the hot air" [0]
on p71 (p84 of the free PDF).

That's the downside but there are some interesting applications. They could
enable you to host your own personal cloud on the box in your home. So you
know where it is.

You could vary the operating time of the servers so they only operate (or at
least only run at 100%) when heating is needed. This could be based on the
season, an external temperature sensor or weather data. Processing could
migrate between the hemispheres of the world depending on the season.

The load could also be varied based on the local grid demands and power mix.
Various real-time data sources are available that report on how green the
current energy mix is [1] [2]. You can even just measure the frequency of the
electricity to see how well generation is matching consumption. This is known
as dynamic demand or demand shaping and you can even be paid by the grid
operator for it so it could be a good business model. It would also be nice if
they partnered with green power companies that buy their energy from renewable
sources.

[0]
[http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html](http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html)
[1]
[http://www.earth.org.uk/_gridCarbonIntensityGB.html](http://www.earth.org.uk/_gridCarbonIntensityGB.html)
[2] [http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)

~~~
masklinn
> Using resistive heating (which is what this is) is not very efficient (even
> if it's a by-product).

If heat is a byproduct it _is_ highly efficient to actually use it rather than
waste it. Here the electricity would be used either way for the processing
tasks. The system would be inefficient if it just ran busy wait to produce
heat, but that's not the case.

> A better way to heat your home is to not waste power and use it instead to
> run an electric heat pump (which are over 100% efficient).

"100% efficient" makes no sense, let alone "over 100% efficient", you're
talking about coefficient of performance (the device's energetic ROI). If you
ignore what the system is actually doing, the eRadiator thing has infinite
efficiency since you're not paying for any heating (aside from installation
costs, which you also have to pay for a heat pump)

~~~
reacweb
The over 100% efficient means that the heat produced in the room is greater
that the energy taken from the wall plug. This makes sense for me.

~~~
masklinn
That's not how thermal efficiency works. And if you don't care for actual
thermal efficiency, the energy taken from the wall plug is irrelevant if
you're not paying for it.

~~~
reacweb
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency#Heat_pumps_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency#Heat_pumps_and_refrigerators)

The expression "coefficient of performance" is used instead of efficiency for
heat pump.

------
TheLoneWolfling
...And no data cap, and don't mind a chunk of your bandwidth being used, and
don't mind a locked box with an always-on and encrypted connection to who-
knows-where in your house. I'd also worry about what happens if/when it breaks
down. (For instance, if the power supply fails. Or whatever: there are pretty
much always single points of failure on such things.)

A neat idea in some ways, but I'd be wary.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _and don 't mind a locked box with an always-on and encrypted connection to
> who-knows-where in your house_

Do you fear hidden microphones, cameras and other sensors? If not, then what's
the harm?

~~~
kardos
Since you have no control over it (aside from ripping it out of the wall),
you're at the mercy of whoever runs the box to adequately secure it. When it
gets hacked, any shady business conducted by the miscreants will be emitted
from /your/ IP, so you're exposing yourself to TOR exit node level liability.

You might be able to work around that.... but it depends what's running on the
box. If it's a backend server for some organisation (database, etc) then you
could have some sort of tunnelling router between it and the fibre that routes
all packets back to the organisation's datacentre.

------
m-i-l
See also "Heating houses with 'nerd power'" from last week at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9581588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9581588)
.

------
michaelleland
What about the electricity costs to run the machines?

~~~
ihsw
It's a cost-sharing agreement, so electricity costs are split between the
data-furnace provider and the home-owner.

~~~
teekert
Half the time it would be "off" (during summer), so that means I will pay for
100% of the actually used energy? In that case I'll stick with natural gas for
my heating. Also this arrangement should not be called "free".

~~~
NeutronBoy
It's installed on an external wall so when you turn the heater 'off', the heat
is redirected to outside. They will apparently also reimburse you for energy
used.

~~~
teekert
That's what I mean, off means it's still "burning" but I get no benefit. And
according to ihsw the bill is split leaving me with: In winter: Gaining 50% of
the power in heat (don't know how that compares heat-wise to natural gas) and
in summer, wasting 50% of my own paid-for electricity. I actually doubt if
ihsw's comment is true.

~~~
pvidler
The bill is not split -- it says they reimburse you for the measured power
usage of the device. Nowhere does it say that this only applies when the heat
is being directed into your house, that I could see.

------
abalone
Can you turn them off? Obviously you don't want to run a heater in the summer.

And if so, wouldn't the resulting (massive) underutilization of hardware erase
whatever savings the data center would realize from not having to deal with
heat?

Not to mention the other (massive) costs of remote servicing, like literally
rolling trucks to replace a hard drive. And 1000W is not even one standard
space heater. I like the general idea but this decentralized in-the-home
concept seems about as well thought out as their logo.

It would be better suited to a centralized application like the heated
swimming pool: year round usage, enough density to achieve economies of scale
in servicing and providing site security.

Or how about this: locate your next data center near a town with a district
heating system, so you can tap into it and pipe waste heat directly into
homes. (Sweden has lots of waste-to-energy plants that burn trash to generate
electricity and hot water heating distributed through networks of pipes.[1])
In the case of Sweden you wouldn't even have to build out much infrastructure;
it's already there. I wonder if anyone has explored this?

EDIT: I just saw ville posted about this very idea. Cool.

EDIT2: jessaustin notes that they keep the server running constantly and
probably use a powered heat pump to vent it outside during the summer. (Which
still raises questions for me about the efficiencies.. small scale heat pumps
probably aren't as efficient as a large-scale data center implementation.)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating)

~~~
URSpider94
The article mentions that the furnace vents waste heat outside when you don't
want it. So, yes, it's running all the time.

------
smegel
> Or a fuse blows?

Or a kid pours his cup of sticky soft drink in the vents (heaters need to have
vents right, almost certainly at the top). Anyone who thinks something can be
"tamper proof" has never lived with a 4 year old.

~~~
eloisius
They surely use redundant, encrypted storage. MaidSafe is a distributed
"cloud" storage protocol that does that:
[http://maidsafe.net/](http://maidsafe.net/)

------
anonymousDan
Cloud&Heat are another company doing this in Germany:
[https://www.cloudandheat.com/en/index.html](https://www.cloudandheat.com/en/index.html)

~~~
vmarsy
And a French one: [http://www.qarnot-
computing.com/technology](http://www.qarnot-computing.com/technology) Qarnot
computing

~~~
Artemis2
Another French one: [http://www.defab.fr/](http://www.defab.fr/)

They're heating water for consumer purposes. I met one of their founders
yesterday, they're pretty neat!

------
fulafel
It would be very interesting to hear their security analysis and conclusions.
The article's casual use of the term "tamper-proof" doesn't sound credible
without details.

------
teekert
The reliability issues that are mentioned are no problem with enough
redundancies of course.

My fiber optic connection is 50/50 even though the line is (the way it is used
now) able to do 500/500\. They should aim for deals with ISPs for my excess
bandwidth.

------
kozak
When it's in the "push heat outside" mode on a hot summer day, there is a
significant amount of air to pump, in order to dissipate a kilowatt. I wonder
how noisy is the unit in this case.

------
hyperion2010
I heated my room in college for 4 years using nothing but a Q6600, never
turned on the radiator once. Nice solution, but probably will have issues
cooling for anywhere that has 90F summer temps.

~~~
omgtehlion
It must be pretty warm where you live. I had a couple of Q6600 upped from
2.4GHz to 3.2GHz, and that wasn’t enough to heat the room. It was in Russia
though...

~~~
masklinn
> It must be pretty warm where you live.

Good insulation and small surface also helps. You won't heat up a 2-story
house with just a computer, but a well-insulated dorm room is more than
feasible.

------
wtracy
I always thought of Bitcoin as an implementation of this idea.

------
dmritard96
What happens in summer?

~~~
jessaustin
TFA:

 _To be eligible for the eRadiator, your home has to have... "an external
wall" ... and the external wall is needed for venting (if you "turn off" the
eRadiator, the servers don't actually turn off; the heat is just pushed
outside)._

Admittedly, without active refrigeration this is unlikely to work too well
when the temperature outside is over 35 C.

EDIT: they don't mention separate electric supplies, so presumably the unit
has a way of tracking its power usage and reimbursing the homeowner. Otherwise
this is just a scam, because far more efficient electrical [EDIT: thanks
'votingprawn!] _heat pumps_ are available for less initial cost. However, the
non-scam scenario seems only to make sense as a business in cold locations.

~~~
nine_k
Makes complete sense in Scandinavia, Iceland, Alaska, etc.

~~~
jessaustin
Is this a correction? A clarification? Was it insensitive to describe those
places as "cold"?

~~~
nine_k
A clarification. For instance, there's plenty of cold in Antarctica, but no
fiber and not enought dwellings. In Scandinavia, high fixed broadband
penetration is actually combined with cold most of the year. (JFYI, Finnish
official definition of summer is temperatures above +10°C for entire 24
hours.)

------
pepijndevos
This seems ideal for running TOR exit nodes. Except for the home owners of
course. I wonder if their TOS forbids this?

