Germans Can Get Free Heating From the Cloud 148
judgecorp writes The idea of re-using waste server heat is not new, but German firm Cloud&Heat seems to have developed it further than most. For a flat installation fee, the company will install a rack of servers in your office, with its own power and Internet connection. Cloud&Heat then pays the bills and you get the heat. As well as Heat customers, the firm wants Cloud customers, who can buy a standard OpenStack-based cloud compute and storage service on the web. The company guarantees that data is encrypted and held within Germany — at any one of its Heat customers' premises. In principle, it's a way to build a data center with no real estate, by turning its waste heat into an asset. A similar deal is promised by French firm Qarnot.
Great in the winter .. (Score:5, Insightful)
.. but in the summer?
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Actually, all that solar energy makes German electricity rather pricey. You know, solar (and wind) is anything but cheap.
Re:Great in the winter .. (Score:4, Informative)
The additional cost for renewables for German consumers in 2014 is 6.24 ct/kWh (and parts of the industry is exempt) which is less than other taxes paid on electricity. While solar is still expensive (but went down a lot) wind is clearly one of the cheapest source of energy.
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'wind is clearly one of the cheapest source of energy.'
For power compagnies, maybe, not for end consumers. If you have the money, solar panels on your roof are a very good investment giving you a ROI of around 15% per year. After 8 or so years, you have payed off your investment but keep getting that 15% year after year. Try getting that from a bank or stocks. Wind turbines however are rarely a possibility for normal people and they end up buying that green energy from the same old power companies. Those co
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You can actually join a cooperative (bij sommige energieleveranciers kan je dat doen, ik zeg geen naam omdat ik niet van gratis reclame hou). these are small cooperatives were you buy your part of a turbine and it works more or less as the solar panels.
Anyway, as soon a I can buy a house (next year) I will surely look into panels.
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And last time I checked the prices (in general) were kept higher as needed because of the huge private energy companies.
6.24 per kWh? Mensch, das ist doch superteuer!
These are the prices here in Holland:
65 eurocent per m3 gas en 23 eurocent per
http://www.milieucentraal.nl/t... [milieucentraal.nl]
We do have our own gas, mind you. And our salaries are slightly lower and rents and house prices expensive as hell.
And we can't forget that clean energy saves us a LOT of money in health expenses and building maintenance due to cleaner
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And the same as the "u" in Dutch ;)
Took me some time to get used to it.
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Actually, all that solar energy makes German electricity rather pricey. You know, solar (and wind) is anything but cheap.
Meanwhile, Dutch smelters are forced to shut down because of German cheap industrial electricity driving them out of business.
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Right, it's only cheaper than coal when amortized over the life of the hardware. And who buys 20-30 years worth of coal up front?
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What's wrong with amortizing cost? It's the logical thing to do.
Some of the low cost airlines save money by having long term fuel purchase agreements.
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Guess I should have included the /sarcasm tag.
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my phone is 11 years old, still fully functional and still gets ten days standby on the same battery it originally came with, how do you go through so many phones??
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maybe slashdot ought to fucking run my submission from ~2011 about how wasteful technology consumption has gotten - from 95% carrier subsidised cellphones to thirty Dollar printers which use ink that's more expensive than premium champagne to entirely user-hostile aftermarket parts services and utterly obstructive methods to getting information, even from a technician's point of view, about how to take apart a fucking fax machine to swap out a worn pinion. My newest computer is three years old, I expect to
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The Toshiba has a 45W PSU. The Dell has a 70. Both can charge off my solar pile (and they are when the sky is light). So for me, electricity is not really considered a running expense.
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Well, you now, here in Europe we prefer to breath air than crap. I agree, all the greens have to be killed and their only aim is to tax the hell out of the hard working US citizen and take our guns away... but we don give too much of a fuck, you know? Because we don't have the need for huge guns here (our real penises are more than enough, thank you very much) and specially because we aren't US citizen.
I am not German but Dutch and I am customer of one of these very diabolical green energy companies... it's
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That's because you're subsidized by a family of six that rents a two-bedroom flat.
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Why not subsidize it with Fed-created money, used to fund fiscal policy at zero cost? The Fed has proven it can fund the market; let it now fund fiscal policies.
Re:Great in the winter .. (Score:5, Informative)
No, to put it into perspective, power in Germany costs about double than in the US - I pay around 0.30€/0.40$ for power per kw/h in Germany, and I'm with the cheapest provider for the whole region...
Re:Great in the winter .. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's closer to three times that of US rates. You're paying double what I am, and I'm in one of the most expensive regions of the country for electricity. Average in the USA is around 12 cents a kwh. That's about .1€
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Maybe one of you considered without taxes? :)
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Maybe one of you considered without taxes? :)
my figure was with the various regulatory fees and taxes. Makes it even worse if kuldan didn't include them.
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What I mean was basically if you both mentioned it included taxes I could understand if energy taxes are higher in Germany than in the US and hence maybe the PRODUCED electricity is "only" twice as expensive in Germany as in the US but with taxes maybe it's three times more expensive.
(Why do Internet Explorer make Words such as Words, Three, Graphics and such with a large letter even though it's not the first Word in a sentence? Compeltely retarded? (Just as the users, but Firefox bugged out and the reason
21 cents / kWh in Connecticut, 38 cents in Hawaii (Score:2)
IIRC, the four most expensive states for electricity in the U.S. are Hawaii, Alaska, New York, and Connecticut. I live in the latter, and pay 22 cents per kWh, though I chose a slightly more expensive option - I could get it for 21 cents / kWh.
I moved from Virginia, which matches the national average of 12 cents per kWh, and it was built into my rent. Since moving I'm dramatically reduced usage - down to less than 200 kWh per month for a two-person household. All the low-hanging fruit is taken, though - not
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Alaska here. A touch over 20 cents/kwh.
As for cutting electricity usage on the extreme end:
Insulate house more. Replace windows
Replace Refrigerator with new energy star unit, even if the old one was ES too, standards have improved tremendously. Get one of the ones with the freezer on the bottom - they're the most efficient.
Switch to line drying, or get a dehumidifier type dryer.
I know we're slashdotters, but turn off the computer if you're not on it. Install an energy efficient micro-server for the torr
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I'm an apartment dweller, so many of the home upgrades aren't possible for me, though when I do buy appliances, energy efficiency is a top concern (recently got a front-loading washer). Line-drying was a no-brainer - why pay when the sun and air will do it for free :-)
Just replaced an energy-hogging server with a low-power version (about 30 watts with little load, 45 with heavy load). It's normally on S3 suspend, and I use WOL to wake it whenever I need it, including remotely (it also wakes itself twice dai
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Now that one surprises me. I do have an electric range/oven, and I would have thought that pan-frying would use less electricity than baking - especially since I'm usually baking for at least 30 minutes, whereas cooking in a pan can often be done in 20 minutes or less.
It's two factors: Frying is normally done at higher temperatures than baking, which is why it's faster, but you're also tossing a LOT of heat into the air, which is part of why you normally have a ventilation fan on while you're doing it. The second is indeed that a oven is normally very good at heat retention, reducing power usage.
Boiling pasta is actually one of the worst things you can do in a standard kitchen as far as energy efficiency goes.
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You probably live in Europe then... 240V to every outlet can be handy sometimes. Though a properly insulated kettle would be interesting.
Though I wonder how that compares efficiency wise with my covering the pot when warming it up and using an induction burner. Or the insulated crock pot, for that matter.
A pressure cooker can do all sorts of amazing things, but there's a reason I said boiling pasta, it's my understanding that you use a pressure cooker to avoid boiling things. ;)
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If you plugged a power strip into their power supply/conditioner, then your electricity would be real cheap.
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Nobody wants hot water in the summer?
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That's too inefficient to be useful. There are thermodynamic limits on what you can do with heat.
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Yes, but you have the heat anyway so inefficiency doesn't matter. It would be a silly way to get cool air if you didn't want the heat in the first place, but that's not what's going on.
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water has a ridiculous thermal capacity. 4.186 joule/gram C and if it does actually reach boiling point, 2.3MJ/kg for total conversion to steam at 100C.
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No need to be that complicated. Just use an absorption chiller.
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In an office? I don't know about you, but I tend to shower at home.
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Showers at work are an under-appreciated luxury.
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Showers at work are an under-appreciated luxury.
They are a necessity for those of us that bike to work.
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A being able to bike to work is a luxury... ;)
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Your company doesn't have a gym? And what do cycle commuters do?
When I didn't live a few blocks' walk from work, I wouldn't even start to consider an employer that didn't have showers at work.
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I wash hands with cold water. Only at the McDonalds we're guaranteed to get warm water in the toilets (with no way to make it cold. I always assumed it was so you don't drink it and order a drink instead. Now I don't go to the McDonalds, I'd rather eat rotten vegetables and dog shit)
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Do you also have shocky monkeys [youtube.com] where you work?
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Given that the house has three ~90 gallon (or ~340 liter) hot water heaters, the 6 heat pumps (5 water-to-air zones and one water-to-water unit for radiant floors) are quite helpful in the cooling season when they are constantly dumping ~95
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Clearly you haven't yet grasped the benefit of a jacuzzi in every office...
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Had the same idea...
plus, what about sound? Does it come in a sound-proof box? If not, it'll be louder than most conventional heating systems, and probably provides less heat.
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What I'd be even more interested in than heat is free broadband access!
Re:Great in the winter .. (Score:5, Informative)
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vent excess heat outside
Uses your air conditioning to cool and exhausts heated air out the window. I've seen it done that way - very, very expensive.
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I'm not sure it's even great in the winter. What's the value of security for your servers compared to a little heating? Would you do business with a company that has their servers in random peoples' offices?
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Would you do business with a company that has their servers in random peoples' offices?
Yes. With proper redundancy, that would be much more reliable than if they had their servers in just a few data centers.
Hello I have a seach warrant for your computers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hello I have a seach warrant for your computers (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know jack about their actual achitechture but, if they do it right, then the loss of any one group of nodes wont matter.
If that is the case, then this actually makes them highly resiliant to this problem. Lets say to actually shut them down meaningfully means shutting down 20 households. That is 20 warrants, at 20 properties, probably some number of jurisdictions, its a lot more work....and basically, wont happen accidentally because someone was an idiot.
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The problem is more that someone may show up in their office (the ones that "rent out" the space to the cloud company), suddenly that cloud server you rented is gone and now try to prove that it's your data and that you have actually nothing to do with the company they raided.
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If it's a proper cloud system the loss of any one node is pretty much expected to be a regular occurrence and automatically compensated for. That's why it's 'cloud', IE you don't care where the servers are, and no accident in any one area of the world should shut you down.
Besides confiscation by government officials you also have backhoes through the fiber, power losses, building accidents/flooding, etc...
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I think the issue is the 'host' company renting space to the 'cloud' will get swept up and lose their own equipment also. Might not happen in Germany, but in the US it is a distinct probability.
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That was the GP's concern, Opportunist flipped it and I responded to that.
The police showing up and taking ALL the IT equipment when they only need the servers is not that likely of a problem even in the USA. Such a confiscation would require reaching though multiple jurisdictions, at which point an office with a clue is likely to get involved and realize that seizing the servers of a reasonably legit cloud company is more than a pain in the butt than working with them to pull what really matters out - the
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Such a confiscation would require reaching though multiple jurisdictions...
One of the things the last 15 years should have taught us is to never trust the authorities to follow the 'law'. They can make it up as they go along. Many of these raids are just plain punitive shakedowns in nature, like a mobster breaking your kneecaps or kidnapping the wife and kids. Oh, you may be found 'innocent' in the end, but just try to get your time and money back.
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That's what a mobster breaking some kneecaps and kidnapping wife and kids of crooked assholes is for.
Just 'cause you don't get satisfaction by the law doesn't mean you can't get satisfaction against the law. Provided you have the money, that is.
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The problem is more that someone may show up in their office (the ones that "rent out" the space to the cloud company), suddenly that cloud server you rented is gone and now try to prove that it's your data and that you have actually nothing to do with the company they raided.
Easy. If you rented it out, there will be a contract. You put the servers behind a locked door with the name of the cloud company on it. Now that room is legally not part of the premises being searched. A policeman with a warrant for the host company's office can no more go in there than he can go into an office down the hall from the one being searched.
It would be different if they just put their servers in a rack in the host company's server room. They would quite likely would get swept up in a general se
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Do Flame Wars make more heat? (Score:1)
WTF, they may not be such a bad thing after all... Let's have a flame war on a cold winter night.
Half of slashdotters have had this idea... (Score:3)
But security, reliability, and other factors seem to defeat any advantages. I wonder who their customers will be.
Re:Half of slashdotters have had this idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, if you're concerned about security you shouldn't be putting stuff in "the cloud" to begin with - it's far more likely that a crooked IT guy at the hosting company will be compromising your data than the random guy whose house contains the servers you're using today. As for reliability - that would be a mixed bag. Software wise, assuming redundant virtualized servers, etc. reliability should be largely unaffected. If anything it should increase since a single localized disaster can't take out nearly as much hardware at once. Hardware-wise, you will see longer down times due to house calls but that's visible primarily to the hosting company, not the customer, and the cost is likely negligible compared to the rent savings.
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Possibly true. However (1) their in-house systems present a much smaller and less tempting target than your cloud services, are you so certain that your security increased proportionally to the risks? And (2) your services likely provide absolutely no security against *you*. Given the scale of operations your staff will have access to far more opportunities for profitable corruption than an in-house staffer, and it's only a matter of time before someone gets a juicy enough offer to compromise their integ
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Well, if you're concerned about security you shouldn't be putting stuff in "the cloud" to begin with
This.
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I don't think those are particularly relevant to this particular the discussion - security and reliability are typically measured from the perspective of the customer, not your "business partners". I will say though that I'd be a tough sell as a "partner" if they wanted unrestricted access to my home, but it sounds like they're probably targeting office buildings and the like anyway, in which case subletting some space is not that unusual a situation. They're just paying rent with heat rather than money.
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Any company who wants to put their data into "the cloud". By definition of the whole shit, security cannot be high up on their list of concerns.
As an interesting tidbit, "cloud" is a homonym with the German "klaut", which means "he/she/it steals".
Outsourcing (Score:5, Funny)
After outsourcing their heating, they can double down and outsource their IT to the cloud, which will run on their on-premises servers.
All of the costs, none of the advantages, but an MBA feels real smart, which really brings a smile to everyone's faces.
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explains the current state of the NHS.
Germans Can Get Free Heating From my Butt (Score:2, Funny)
God I love the cloud to butt plugin, it never fails to amuse.
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> butt to butt plugin
Never heard of that one, I'll be sure to check it out.
Energy Efficiency? (Score:1)
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If you come out with a new gen that makes less heat it means it can be more dense so the overall heat per racks stays at least similar (and often goes up). You would need something where the next gen produces less heat but is more sensitive to it to produce an optimal next gen that puts out less heat.
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Server racks have been stable in power usage for quite a while. Generally speaking, if they cut the power consumption per 'X' computational measure(flops, CPUs, memory, etc...) in half they'll simply double the density of that computational measure.
Besides, you're probably looking at a 3-7 year upgrade cycle on these racks. I'm sure they don't want to touch them too often.
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incentives choosing inefficient hardware.
The hardware choice is down to the company, not the person getting the benefit from the heat.
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What happens even with the first generation of hardware? Servers could go 99% idle, and they'll throttle down already. The system will work adequately if there's a target for minimum heat production and some folding@home kind of computing runs if needed to meet it.
Security of Servers In Random Locations? (Score:2)
So you've got servers hosting potentially sensitive data. Ordinarily, physical access to these boxes would be restricted to the people with data center access. Now will it be RANDOM_OFFICE_WORKER in RANDOM_COMPANY? Sure, you might have the servers password protected, but physical access to the boxes trumps nearly any other kind of security. This sounds to me like it is just a matter of time before some kind of massive data leak occurs thanks to hosting the servers outside of a secured data center.
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a) Full User Data Encryption
b) Striping
c) Full Local Data Encryption
There will only be part of your data on any particular server/location and when the User encrypts his data, it's pretty much impossible to recover when you only have part of the data. When the provider then encrypts their systems as well, you'll have a hell of a time breaking all forms of encryption unless you can get access to all the keys and all the stripes.
Hi-speed internet penetration (Score:2)
The article doesn't mention anything about access to the internet, so I take it true high-speed symmetric internet connections are available pretty universally in Germany.
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Dialup is all many can get.
Where broadband is available it's something like 6 to 100mbps down and 128kbps up with 25 to 300 GB limit per month.
Who Gets the Noise? (Score:2)
I'd want to know more about the noise levels produced before I signed up.
What About Bitcoin Mining? (Score:1)
prior art (in my mind) (Score:2)
I had a similar idea back when some bright spark decided a 40 foot container would make a great module for a closed server stack (2006?). The question was: "What to do with all that waste heat?" The answer: "pump it into a building which lets you park one of these crates in their parking lot."
Really? (Score:2)
There is no way ... (Score:2)
Um, physical security? (Score:2)
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I've yet the capital to build a prototype since the dream server alone would cost about 140k to build, but my theory goes like this: Cold water line runs through copper lines to wick away the heat from the procs. The hot water/ steam gets pushed through a steam turbine generator before it hits a relay junction where an electronic valve will either direct the still hot water/steam through the heating system or to a large hot water tank that would provide hot water for the building. The same tank would als
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Use butane instead of water, which boils at a temperature that is compatible with CPUs. The pressures involved are quite reasonable too eg (30psi).
The butane vapor then flows though a turbine to create power, through a heater exchanger to chill back down and recondense, and then is pumped back to the CPU.
If you have steam your system qwould have
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Still need hot water don't you? Unless you're an office space too small to hold a restroom...but then why would you have a data-center cornered off? Granted, the idea is American Centrist from me being located in North America; but also by living in the Southern USA I can understand the desire to not add to the heat of the air. The best response I have to that is that maybe by the time I can start building this dream, adsorption chillers [technologyreview.com] may be a viable solution. Aside from hope-tech, it's a design hole
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Why would you heat restroom water in a hot country?
I know a guy who was grown in a hot country (a former colony), no winter at those lattitudes. There was no hot water anywhere, to shower he used the water directly. Then it was not hard to step outside and dry up.
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Security on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (Score:2)