District heating: Using data centers to heat communities(allthingsdistributed.com) |
District heating: Using data centers to heat communities(allthingsdistributed.com) |
Sending the electricity generated elsewhere directly to the district is a much more efficient way to heat the district.
The idea of a data center heating a community would make sense if a data center generated power instead of merely consuming it inefficiently. Building infrastructure that used heat from data centers would have diminishing returns as data centers become more efficient.