Energy
Title: “This German Data Center Wants To Heat Your House With Its Servers.”
Website Name: FastCoExist
Link: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3039022/this-german-data-center-wants-to-heat-your-house-with-its-servers
Summary
- Problem: the energy that data centers use to power the Internet uses more energy than the entire country of India while most of that energy is lost as waste heat
- Solution: Cloud & Heat, a German cloud company, stores server cabinets in houses and apartment buildings. While the servers crunch data, the excess heat is used to warm up the homes in the winter and provide hot water all year
- Internet service is also faster when servers are distributed while also moving the data closer to the people
Stakeholders
- Landlords, building owners
- Data center owners, colocation businesses, Infrastructure-as-a-Service companies
- Energy utility companies
3 steps
- (People) Find engineers that know how to connect server heat pipe to fuel the home
- (Process) Develop a way to efficiently install cabinets of servers in apartment buildings
- (Technology) Functioning servers that have enough cooling to guarantee that a client’s data would function just as well if placed in a regular server farm
