• 0110010001100010@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It’s actually a really cool concept honestly. I do this on a very tiny scale at home. I run a small server cluster largely as a playground but also for things like Plex and Vaultwarden. The waste heat from that is pushed out the back of the rack and a heat pump water heater a few feet away uses that to help heat water.

    As you said, seems like there are many opportunities to do this on a much lager scale.

    • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Nice, I have much the same setup in my house!

      I visited the recently Passive House certified student residence buildings at the University of Victoria, and the heat recovery there is quite interesting. Passive House requires a very low heating load, so they recover all the heat they can from the commercial kitchen (the presence of which is rare in a Passive House because of high ventilation requirements) processes such as ventilation hoods and refrigeration systems and put it into the DHW system.

      They had to get a bit creative with the design, but it’s really not that complicated. More just not doing things the way they’ve always been done.