Topic: We'd love board feedback on our concept: Combined Heating and Computation (Read 6850 times)

The website looks much more professional than before, however it's lacking information. I'd like to see diagrams/explanations while getting straight to the point and avoiding obfuscation.

As I said before you should really forget about solar roadways and try to distance yourself because it's damaging your credibility. It is undeniably uneconomical to make solar roadways. It's been debunked by so many engineers at this point I'm surprised so many people are still latching on to the concept. If you guys can't figure out why solar roadways is unfeasible then I'm afraid your invention is doomed to fail for the same reasons they are. (hint: it's the cost)

Looking at the "henry-build-log" I am digging the watercooling setup however it looks pretty expensive. I'm guessing your whole cost is at least ~$500 for a ~500W system.

Let's do the math:

I pay ~$10/MBTU ($0.034/kwh) and ~$0.15/kwh.

0.5 kw * $0.034 * 24 * 365 = $148 (possible savings per year)

0.5 kw * $0.15 * 24 * 365 = $657 (cost of using electric heating instead of natural gas)

So you would need to find a computing application that pays at least $509 per year with only 500w worth of hardware before it becomes cheaper than natural gas heating for a maximum savings of only $148 per year.

If you do manage to find an application that pays out that well, then I'm sure it would make more sense to just set up a datacenter with cheaper electricity + more powerful/efficient servers.

Well my friend,  Solar Roadways has been chosen by Popular Science as one of the 100 Greatest Innovations of 2014! It's in their 27th annual "Best of What's New" December issue and the department of energy as well as the California IOUs have asked us to submit proposals for grants... Looks like were both on the right path!

Take a look at the new projectexergy.com and let us know if this is any better.

This is a dumb idea. Don't send them money. Home Bitcoin mining is dead, killed by increasing difficulty.

It's not even a new dumb idea.  Over 30 years ago, there was the Frenette Friction Furnace, an electric motor driving a brake. This is just the Internet-enabled version of an old scam.

**All the key concepts are practical, the only thing we've proven is we're not particularly good at explaining them... thanks for cluing us in, when you do this every day it all seems pretty obvious.

**I personally donated to solar roadways, not because it was practical but because it sends a message to manufacturers, developers and governments that this is the kind of change I want to see.  Whether you think it was a scam or not he made a trip to the White House (Bill Nye evidently likes him?) and is building the things at a scale previously not possible.  Interesting thing is he has already taken orders for several of the first systems proving we either don't understand the economic model or that he doesn't need one to sell the product.

**How can Solar Roadways sell their systems or raise grant money from the DOT without a clear economic model?  Saying you don't understand his model likely points to his inability to explain it well or our inability to understand it - it obviously says little about the product's viability since he is actually building and selling it!

Care to share your calculations?

Only in a perfect world where weather conditions never change throughout the year and people always use the same amount of heating/AC/hot water/refrigeration, this might work well.

**Wont share the calculations but I will give you a clue - the key is in the storage tanks.  


Where else would you publish it, the local newspaper? You guys came to this forum asking for feedback without giving us any idea of what your product does. We really shouldn't have to pry this info from you especially when you're weeks from launching a kickstarter.

**We came to see how people react to the idea, not to give them our business model.

What exactly is your business model? Will you be running a monetized distributed network? Selling the rube golberg machines by themselves? Selling hardware+rube golberg machine combos? Designing a chip? Installing/servicing entire home integrated systems?

Not sure how we're supposed to know/discuss your concept while you guys are providing as little information as possible.

**That is a problem but you are obviously smart and think about this stuff, I'm sure you will think of several viable business models if you let the concept sink in for a day or two.

So far here's what you've demonstrated:

- Using a computer creates heat which can then be sent through a watercooling loop to an insulated tank that can store the heat for a few hours and release it when heating is needed. (subtracted the rube golberg part)
- By spending several hundreds of dollars you can match the efficiency of a stock cpu fan+heatsink when it comes to heating your home using a computer.

**No, you removed a key and fundamental element of the system.

Here's what you need to demonstrate:

- You can store 190F water in a tank for hours without significant heat loss.
**I'll do you better - the next set of tanks will be filled with phase change material that actually holds significantly more energy than the water tanks we are using now.  Noodle on that for a bit.

- You can use 190F water from a computer to efficiently and cost effectively power a watertank/AC/refrigerator.
**Already done.  Wait - do you want to actually drink a computation cooled beer?  That can be arranged.

- You can efficiently power each of those appliances at the same time.
**We don't need to - think about energy storage... you'll get it.

- You can do so while maintaining a constant/efficient computing rate throughout the day/year.
**We don't need to.  If the energy source for the computation is free then I care a whole lot less about the efficiency of the computation.

- You can prove the costs are not more than regular gas/electric heating.
**Alright.  Computation produces the same amount of heat for the same energy as a resistance heater.  Computers are, after all, resistance heaters.  If you currently have a resistance heated anything we are 1-1 - if you don't the free computation more than pays for the delta in cost.

- You can give people an incentive to run their computers 24/7/365 (it's not like people are naturally using 1.5KW 24/7. More like ~200W a few hours a day)
**We don't want to run your computer, we'll want you to run our computer and we might be able to do that very inexpensively, from an energy perspective.

Until then you really have no business starting a crowdfunding campaign, but that's just my opinion.
**I don't remember asking for permission but perhaps the above answers have changed your mind?

**Whoa.  Is there a business model in there somewhere?

Have you really run out of experimenting funds in the theoretical stage?

Seems like a group of people with access to a national lab and fancy simulation software should have no problem buying an old used refrigerator and hooking it up to a water cooling loop to prove your theory.

I'd even be willing to bet you could have bought a used refrigerator or AC for less money than you wasted on those two hot water tanks.

**Interestingly the only reason to even plug a refrigerator into the thing it to demo for people, the math is done we've hit the temperature targets it'll work the moment its connected.  The hot water tanks are a necessity.  In order to test the performance of the system you have to have a load to run it against and the tanks do that perfectly.  We also have a pretty good approximation of the time we need to get that water from whatever point we want to start to whatever point we need to end while testing different strategies (like over/under clocking/volting) to performance test the system.  We can also draw heat off that load without thermally shocking the system - it acts a a buffer.  As you can imagine they system dosent like to go from 180 to ambient in one shot.


You've demonstrated that you can keep hot water in an insulated tank and heat the water using a computer but literally nobody thought that was impossible or hard to do.

** your obviously smarter than this...

You've really proven nothing new, especially none of the key concepts you're suggesting are practical.

**All the key concepts are practical, the only thing we've proven is we're not particularly good at explaining them... thanks for cluing us in, when you do this every day it all seems pretty obvious.

It's just like how solar roadways has "proven" you can recover electricity from solar panels on a road but in reality it makes absolutely no sense economically.

**I personally donated to solar roadways, not because it was practical but because it sends a message to manufacturers, developers and governments that this is the kind of change I want to see.  Whether you think it was a scam or not he made a trip to the White House (Bill Nye evidently likes him?) and is building the things at a scale previously not possible.  Interesting thing is he has already taken orders for several of the first systems proving we either don't understand the economic model or that he doesn't need one to sell the product.


How can you possibly begin raising funds without a clear business model?

**How can Solar Roadways sell their systems or raise grant money from the DOT without a clear economic model?  Saying you don't understand his model likely points to his inability to explain it well or our inability to understand it - it obviously says little about the product's viability since he is actually building and selling it!

Or is fleecing kickstarter tards the plan?

**We have a business model, it'll eventually be on the website and (like I said) we're not going to outline it on this forum.  Before we do that we'll obviously have to get a lot better at explaining how this thing works to people... although the business model is slightly easier.  Just because its easy to explain to engineers or people already working in the energy industry doesn't mean we can ignore everyone else.  I want to thank you for pointing that out, we'll use this good information to get our act together a little more before we do the kickstarter - I'll fully expect you to be there to debunk us!

Have you really run out of experimenting funds in the theoretical stage?

Seems like a group of people with access to a national lab and fancy simulation software should have no problem buying an old used refrigerator and hooking it up to a water cooling loop to prove your theory.

I'd even be willing to bet you could have bought a used refrigerator or AC for less money than you wasted on those two hot water tanks.


You've demonstrated that you can keep hot water in an insulated tank and heat the water using a computer but literally nobody thought that was impossible or hard to do.

You've really proven nothing new, especially none of the key concepts you're suggesting are practical.

It's just like how solar roadways has "proven" you can recover electricty from solar panels on a road but in reality it makes absolutely no sense economocally.


How can you possibly begin rasing funds without a clear business model?

Or is fleecing kickstarter tards the plan?

I think part of the disconnect in this discussion is that in this theoretical stage, we are at the limit if answering a lot of the harder questions (and really great ones I might add) because we have hit the limit of the R&D we can do at the level we want. That's the point of the crowdfunding campaign - so we can address and discover more appropriate ways / places where this concept would be a best fit.

We've proven a few key (and major) concepts but we need to prove more and as my colleague mentioned, we have a national lab here in the US who is onboard to help us do that.

Once we start knocking out the things we can and can't do, the business model that we commit to will become more clear.

**If sized correctly to the load it should run far more than the 20-30% utilization rate the typical datacenter sees.  There are about 120 different distributed computing networks out there now (a good Wiki search) and they are growing in number every day.  Bitcoin is a distributed computing network.  The idea idea is to compute whenever there is a need to generate heat, when the system is sized right that need can be pretty consistent.  Again - we would not continue to develop this design, it is just the first prototype.

**Not the model - a valiant effort but, seriously, who would do that?  And... why would we publish the business model on a forum?

Are you saying that currently only 55% of the heat stays in the loop when you want to use it for refrigeration/AC? 45% waste?

**No, I'm saying the current prototype is not very efficient at managing heat.   All the plumbing that moves the coolant is uninsulated and looses a fair amount of heat - the hotter it gets vs ambient the bigger the loss.  We're not investing in the first prototype anymore, its already proven the parts can manage the heat we need to make.


Correct, it will not be economic.

Here's a simplified comparison for 1MW worth of computing power:

A: Classic datacenter Capex: - hardware: $1,000,000 - Warehouse+infrastructure: $200,000 Opex(yearly): - Electricity: $570,000 (1.3MW at $0.05/kwh) - Employees:$100,000 5 Year total: $4,500,000

B: Distributed computing (using your method) Capex: - Hardware: $5,000,000* - Cooling recovery system: $5,000,000* (~$1/W at 5MW) - Distributing/shipping: $500,000 Opex: - Employees: $500,000** 5 year total: $13,000,000

<sup>*Assuming it would require 5 times the amount of hardware because it's being used 25% of the time due to none of your applications requiring 100% load 100% of the time and a 20% efficiency loss due to the hot chips. This is also assuming the system is 100% efficient at recovering the heat but your post suggest it might be closer to 50%.

**If sized correctly to the load it should run far more than the 20-30% utilization rate the typical datacenter sees.  There are about 120 different distributed computing networks out there now (a good Wiki search) and they are growing in number every day.  Bitcoin is a distributed computing network.  The idea idea is to compute whenever there is a need to generate heat, when the system is sized right that need can be pretty consistent.  Again - we would not continue to develop this design, it is just the first prototype.

**I've got no idea how many people it takes to properly run a distributed computing network but I'm sure it takes more than the 2 people needed top operate a large scale bitcoin mine. (guessing at least 10 employees)</sup>

** If memory serves Stanfords folding at home network is 250k distributed machines across the planet and everyone who donates their computer idle time is a part of that network.  They have a handful of techs that keep the software and their server running as well as spend time on the forums to answer questions and talk through bug fixes.  Not too many.

So basically you will have ~$9.3M extra startup costs so you can save ~$170k/year.. In this scenario it would take more than 50 years to pay off.

Overall cool idea, just entirely unpractical like solar roadways.

**Not the model - a valiant effort but, seriously, who would do that?  And... why would we publish the business model on a forum?

Side note: Do you plan on having certified technicians around the country ready to fix peoples heater/AC/refrigeration systems when they stop working? Will you be reimbursing customers for all their spoiled food when the computer crashes for a few hours?

**Nope - there are service models that don't require techs all around the world, at scale this will be more like an appliance, not a computer.  

Secondly, the 'rube goldberg' device pictured above is about 75% efficient at transferring heat to the loop at low temps and it drops to about 50-60% at higher temps above ~160.  The second prototype is submerged in a silicon fluid and well insulated, Sri (senior scientist) is modeling the device now in Comsol http://www.comsol.com/comsol-multiphysics?gclid=CNnmyLeI2MACFSsV7AodCTsALQ and its looking like we'll easily break into the mid 90% efficiency for heat capture with the device when submerged.

As for the economics - free energy for computation isn't going to be economic?  Remember we are using energy once and getting two benefits - heat and computation.  You pay for the heat, the computation is free (from an energy perspective) except for the cost of the device.

Thanks-

No one is saying that absorption refrigeration is not possible.  When I was very young my parents lived off the electrical grid.  We had an old kerosene powered refrigerator which ran by burning kerosene.  It used absorptive refrigeration.  The refrigerator was replaced as soon as the far cheaper electricity became available.  

We are just saying it is extremely unlikely to be economic running off bitcoin miners.

With your proposed temperature difference of 50C or even 100F the efficiency will be 5 to 10%. The second law of thermodynamics sets an absolute limit to any heat engine.

Lets be really totally optimistic and assume  you are aiming for a 10% efficiency.  If you output 1,000W of heat from a miner you will get at the most 100W or useful work out and still have to get rid of at least 900 Watts of heat.  I just cannot see it even coming close to making economic sense.

Your web site says you have a "Lead Scientist" so I assume there has been some calculations done on expected energy output, on the overall economics, and on waste heat removal to maintain the 100f difference in temperature.

To repeat.  It is the efficiency and economics we question.  Not whether absorption refrigeration exists.

**Thanks for the feedback - its good stuff... except for #4.  We're talking about a minimum temperature difference today of > 100f to ambient which is more than enough to run a single or double effect absorber.  Remember, this thing is running at 180 to 200f right now (with off the shelf parts!), that's more than enough TD to regenerate desiccant or run an absorber.  The ideal range for the absorptive refrigerator is 180 - 200f, if you go above 230f it actually looses efficiency and starts to break down the refrigerant.  The plan is start building chips that hit 210 to 250f.

http://web.stanford.edu/group/narratives/classes/08-09/CEE215/ReferenceLibrary/Chillers/AbsorptionChillerGuideline.pdf
http://www.yazakienergy.com/waterfired.htm

To improve your web site so it looks less like a scam site:

1) Redo your "team" page so it looks less like a teenage gamers attempt to be cool.

2) Sort out what distributed/grid computing has to do with anything.  One example from your web site (http://www.3xergy.com/wp/concept/)  

"The concept innovation proposed is an appliance that is designed to generate heat from a silent, self-contained computer processing unit which acts as a node(s) in a larger distributed grid computing network. The appliance will send a portion of the computational needs locally to common devices such as tablets, entertainment / gaming consoles, and personal computing, and a portion of computational needs globally as part of a distributed cloud computing network."  

What on earth does the above mean.  And why do you keep mentioning distributed/grid computing?

As a general comment the sentences on your web site are too long and convoluted.  You need to rewrite it to use simpler and clearer English.

3) Remove all those graphs that seem to have no purpose but to look impressive.  For example what does your device have to do with a graph showing the percentage of people in single dwelling houses.

4) Stop taking in this thread about "absorption cooling" and using "heat to create cold" as if the second law of thermodynamics does not apply to them.  The efficiency of extracting heat energy from a small temperature difference to drive refrigeration is extremely low, 5-10% with say a 50C difference.  It does not matter whether you are generating electricity or driving a refrigerator, the same laws of physics apply to the amount of energy you can extract from a temperature difference.

5) Make more realistic prototypes.  Don't have passive boxes with tubes that go out of the box and then immediately back in again.  At least describe in detail what the parts of the prototype are doing.  Otherwise it just looks like any water cooled PC.  Even better show the prototype actually doing something useful, making ice or steam or whatever.  A cup of coffee would be nice.


**Thanks for the feedback - its good stuff... except for #4.  We're talking about a minimum temperature difference today of > 100f to ambient which is more than enough to run a single or double effect absorber.  Remember, this thing is running at 180 to 200f right now (with off the shelf parts!), that's more than enough TD to regenerate desiccant or run an absorber.  The ideal range for the absorptive refrigerator is 180 - 200f, if you go above 230f it actually looses efficiency and starts to break down the refrigerant.  The plan is start building chips that hit 210 to 250f.

http://web.stanford.edu/group/narratives/classes/08-09/CEE215/ReferenceLibrary/Chillers/AbsorptionChillerGuideline.pdf
http://www.yazakienergy.com/waterfired.htm

Any help you guys have on improving the website so people don't immediately jump to 'scam!' would be a great help.  We need people to see the simple elegance of the solution, not worry that its a scam.