Amazon’s Seattle campus is using a data center next door as a furnace

Efficiency <= 1 - Tc / Th, where Tc is the cold exhaust temperature and Th is the hot temperature. This is of course a theoretical ideal engine.

The issue is that for something like a coal or oil or gas plant, Tc is still damn hot. Something like 900 degrees F is common. It's too low to use for a second cycle of electricity usage, but it's still plenty hot to heat your living room.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency#Carnot_effi...

We currently use a wood stove that uses a catalytic combuster, so actually reburns the smoke for even more heat. Silly efficiency and almost no particulate matter so passes even the most stringent environmental laws. Its actually one the greenest ways to heat a place like ours. (it only heats the main living area though, we use small space heaters for bedrooms downstairs)

This will be more useful for computationally heavy usages with minimal data transfers.

I know someone who has a pair of old mining rigs. They were used as heaters over winter. They didn’t make enough to cover their electrical bill but they took most of the cost of heating away. It’s the fan noise that would bug me.