memes

Now that we have reverse cycle AC (heat pumps), 100% is a low bar.

Look into geothermal heat pumps. During the summer they pump heat from your house underground, and during the winter they pump it back in.

But the energy doesn't really stay there. The thermal mass and temperature of the ground just means that you can always efficiently take heat from it or effectively dump heat into it. Always predictably the same efficiency.
If the heat was actually stored, the start of summer and winner the pump would be super efficient, but by the end it'd be inefficient working hard to move the heat. So it seems kinda wasteful that the energy isn't being stored, but it's actually kinda better that it isn't.

You just described a water heater.

One that would potentially store heat at super dangerous pressures of steam granted.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/15/1091042/thermal-batteries-heat-energy-storage/

That's the dream right there.

my grow tent

One of these days I also need to get around to starting my grow operation myself lol

Shit with my gf and I both gaming, sometimes we have to open a window in the winter

I turn off Folding@Home in the summer. Otherwise it's on 24x7.

So it sends data to/from a remote place? A place that's probably far away, kinda like those fluffy-looking things in the sky? May I suggest that you name your idea "cloud computing"?

I mean data center excess heat is already used for district heating and that's a shared resource. Not free or communal computing resource though.

There, you're out.

That's a lot of bandwidth, but it sounds like a good idea.

This is true, but it's shocking how few people have heat pumps, especially in colder climates.

Still, it's also far less efficient than using a gas furnace (to the point that most people would actually burn more fossil fuels per Joule of heat from a resistive heater than from just burning the gas directly in a furnace).

Of course, if you're doing something useful with that energy, using the waste heat is an extra benefit. Like using waste heat from a power plant for district heating.

Yes, but im already using the computer for other things and it would be more inefficient to double up on heating sources. I can confirm from personal expirence a PC in a small room can sufficently act as climate control.

Conversely it's exactly as efficient as a resistive heater, which lots of people still use.

Not sure who's down voting you. You're right. There's Heat pumps that can move 5x more heat than the energy they use. While a PC only gives you max 1:1

No one is comparing efficiency of a PC as a heating device to a Heat Pump.

So I'm not sure why you felt the need to post this.

“Incredibly inefficient” is a bit of an exaggeration, heat pumps typically run at an efficiency of about 2, occasionally 3. It’s better but not by orders of magnitude. Not gonna make much of a difference at 500 watts.

Do you expect me to teabag you in 1080p at 120 Hz like some medieval peasant? My nutsack textures require at least 4K at 240 Hz or else you can't make out the individual hairs as they brush your nose.

That's why I like my mini PC with a laptop GPU. Its not the most powerful, but it can play most stuff at 1080p Very High settings and get 60 FPS all while using 300ish watts. Good enough for me. I really don't want to deal with noise, size and power consumption of a kitted out gaming rig anymore.

Put a 4090 in there and pump those numbers up!

Maybe a failure at a commercial level, but ~~people~~ tech nerds are still heating their homes in the winter with crypto miners