Can Safe Network become the world's most energy-efficient Internet network? (Energy efficiency of the Safe Network)

[neo]

@Profess

had something else in mind

Yes I think so too, but used it to leap frog into a rant on another point LOL

[loziniak]

@happybeing

transmit power to each other on the move

Like charging your phone from a tablet of someone else that’s sitting next to you on the bus?

[happybeing]

Similar in principle but it was going to be more like a charging infrastructure than ad-hoc between devices. So power source(s) somewhere and power delivered across many devices. I think it was using some radio effect that is able to carry power a bit like having invisible power lines.

[loziniak]

Wireless power transfer

[Profess]

@happybeing

Similar in principle but it was going to be more like a charging infrastructure than ad-hoc between devices.

The fundamental problem with such energy transmission is the issue of low power and energy density, for many reasons this solution would be impractical, it would be much better to bet on direct energy generation solutions with piezoelectric materials using the movement, vibration, noise, etc. of electric charges around us.

@loziniak

Wireless power transfer - Wikipedia

The key phrase in this technology is probably this:

An important issue associated with all wireless power systems is limiting the exposure of people and other living beings to potentially injurious electromagnetic fields.

[loziniak]

Transfering energy on long distance, even with cables, has its drawbacks, human injuries included. It would be best to get rid of energy transfer entirely, and generate power just where it’s needed, with the private generators, like solar/wind.

[peca]

That would be awesome, but plutonium for radioisotope generators is hard to get …wind doesn’t work everywhere and doesn’t work well on small scale, and solar is not enough fol colder parts of the world.

[Profess]

@storage_guy

People think that Cloud providers and Datacentres in general are efficient and in many ways they are because of the consolidation of resources. But the big thing wrong with most of them is that they don’t use the waste heat they generate. There are a few that use it to heat houses, swimming pools, grow tomatoes, etc. but they are few and far between.

The other thing wrong with them is that most of them also use a significant amount of energy in moving that heat to the air outside.

It’s been a long time since I should have responded and thanked @storage_guy for picking up on this topic, so here’s an opportunity

Exactly, waste heat is a huge untapped energy, whose gigantic waste proves that climate policy is a big manipulation. Waste heat is the largest untapped energy source in the world!

The amount of waste heat generated in Europe alone is about 2860 TWh of energy per year, almost equal to the EU’s demand for heating and hot water in residential and commercial buildings (e.g. schools, hospitals, hotels, shopping centres) - it about 90% of the EU’s demand of 3180 TWh. Focusing on data centres, a conservative estimate for 2020 shows that 1,269 data centres in the EU and UK produced 95 TWh of available waste heat in one year.

@storage_guy

(One of the maddest things I’ve ever seen was in a new Datahall in a large Datacentre. I was surprised to see a bunch of 5KW space heaters running in it! “Why?!” I hear you ask? Because otherwise the air cooling and conditioning system wouldn’t work properly! The Datahall was new and largely empty with just a couple of racks installed in the space that would eventually have hundreds of racks (we were installing some of the first racks in this big empty space). They needed to have the air conditioning and cooling system running to regulate the temperature and humidity across the Datahall for the servers that were running but it doesn’t function well when the air isn’t hot enough and furthermore when all the heat being generated is all up one end of the space. Seems mad but it makes perfect sense when you are already doing something definitely not optimal.)

@loziniak

Transfering energy on long distance, even with cables, has its drawbacks, human injuries included. It would be best to get rid of energy transfer entirely, and generate power just where it’s needed, with the private generators, like solar/wind.

@peca

That would be awesome, but plutonium for radioisotope generators is hard to get …wind doesn’t work everywhere and doesn’t work well on small scale, and solar is not enough fol colder parts of the world.

Renewable energy can be produced and stored where we consume it, and at the same time we can use waste heat, significantly reducing the cost of producing and storing energy, it is not true that renewable energy is unstable and we need chemical batteries for storage.

For example, if we build a distributed data centre (SafeNet), by placing it in an optimal location, from the waste heat from the servers (running thousands or millions of nodes) we will optimally produce the large amount of energy (fuel) of the future, which is biomethane (CH4). A small biomethane reactor is a laboratory-scale biogas plant that produces an extremely clean gas from any type of organic waste, making biomethane a globally available, stable, renewable energy source with negative emissions!

It is therefore possible to produce renewable energy (biomethane) from publicly available waste, with solar, wind or hydroelectric energy, and with waste heat from server equipment, and then the gas obtained can be used for: space heating, temperature control in the server room, energy storage, energy generation by an internal combustion engine connected to an energy generator, thus creating a self-sustaining renewable energy loop with an overall zero or negative emissions balance.
In addition, the server rooms can be built with Hempcrete, which is a natural insulator and humidity regulator, further optimising energy consumption in buildings.

[loziniak]

@Profess

It is therefore possible to produce renewable energy (biomethane) from publicly available waste, with solar, wind or hydroelectric energy, and with waste heat […]

So, have anybody checked how much biomethane should a 4-person household produce during summer for the rest of the year? And how much food scraps and fallen leaves would they need?

[Profess]

Probably someone has counted, but that is hardly the topic for this forum

I wrote about this because waste heat can be an added value to the overall energy efficiency of SafeNet.

Of course, it should be added that such an installation should be placed near a data centre (e.g. SafeNet) to benefit from the synergy effect, but in cooperation with the entity that will produce the biomethane, and focus on building and operating the network yourself.