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Struggling to heat your home? Try 500 Raspberry Pi units (www.theregister.com)

submitted 2 days ago by MHLoppy@fedia.io to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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UK Power Networks trials Thermify's HeatHub boilers, swapping gas flames for clustered compute

Reusing heat from servers has gained momentum recent years, but UK Power Networks (UKPN) is taking an unusual approach: installing mini datacenters powered by Raspberry Pi hardware in customers homes to provide heating for families struggling with energy costs.

UKPN, which manages the "last mile" of cables and substations delivering electricity from the National Grid to customers in the South East of England, is piloting the project as part of its SHIELD (Smart Heat and Intelligent Energy in Low-income Districts) program.

This will equip participating households with solar and battery systems, while one-third will also receive the "HeatHub" system - a compact datacenter roughly the size of a large heat pump that replaces traditional gas boilers. [...]

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[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 9 points 2 days ago

if you’re actually using the waste heat from a PC does that mean its basically 100% energy efficient?

Yes, but there is a big caveat: Heat pumps are much greater than 100% electrically efficient.

No, that doesn't violate thermodynamics. We don't count any of the thermal energy input into the "source" side of the heat pump, but it ends up on the "sink" side anyway. We are only comparing electrical input to thermal output, and the thermal output is much greater than the electrical input: Heat pumps are much more electrically efficient at heating your home than any form of resistive heating, including the waste heat from your PC.

A mining rig might be able to exceed the economic efficiency of a heatpump, but we would need much more data to attempt that calculation.