Snow Melt System (City of Holland, MI)(www.cityofholland.com)

2 pointsby rmasona day ago1 comment

rmasona day ago
This is genius, here in Michigan the city's along Lake Michigan get 'lake effect' snow that is a multiple of what occurs in the rest of the state. Muskegon tackled it with tunnels although most of them are closed now.
Could a data center that was water cooled end up melting snow off streets and sidewalks? It would be an easier sell to the public imho if it did.
- Mountain_Skiesa day ago
  It would be great during the cold months, but Michigan does have four seasons and summers do get hot.
  - toomuchtodoa day ago
    You could potentially pump the heat into the ground to use as a seasonal energy store, or otherwise switch to air cooling when you're not in district heating mode. Perhaps sell the heat energy as ConEd sells steam service in NYC [1] (serving 3M people).
    [1] https://www.coned.com/en/commercial-industrial/steam
- westurnera day ago
  Roadway heating to reduce snow melt costs sounds like a good use for waste process heat, for example from datacenters.
  FWIU typically it's necessary to amp up waste heat in order to get it to move through a heat pipe under a street.
  There are LEED Green buildings that are heated by datacenter waste heat.
  From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42694570 :
  > Most datacenters have no way to return their boiled, sterilized, [demineralized] water for water treatment, and so they don't give or sell datacenter waste water back, it takes heat with it when it is evaporated.
  > "Ask HN: How to reuse waste heat and water from AI datacenters?" (2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40820952
  A sustainable thermofluid would increase the efficiency and sustainability of heat recovery and reuse operations