this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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Late-game capitalism is really giving us the dumbest ideas.
On the long list of dumb ideas, this doesn't even begin to qualify. Almost all the energy that goes into a computer comes out as heat. If you can dump that heat into a tank of water that you wanted to be hot in the first place, you are saving almost all the electricity cost (assuming the hot water heater is an electric tank style heater, not a natural gas or tankless version).
Those tankless versions are brilliant.
I just don’t see this as anything different from other "green measures" that pretend they’re doing something great and glossing over the major thing they’re doing to contribute to waste in the first place.
The key in this case would be finding somewhere to put the waste heat from the computer, where you would normally be paying to add heat in the first place. That's why you need to specify electric tank water heaters to make this idea work. You would be using energy to keep the water hot anyway, might as well do some additional work with that energy first.