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Fight me (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I don't have a source handy, but someone attempted to heat their apartment with computers and ended up spending something like >$1000 in utilities that month.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Resistive heat is expensive - that's why heat pumps are so good.
    In practice, they would have gotten identical results with any electric resistive heater. Fans, oil filled, ceramic, etc. all largely doesn't matter as it is Wh of electricity to Wh of heat.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    They must have overshot, then. Computers are 100% efficient space heaters that produce math as a byproduct.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    in the uk price per kWh for electricity is over five times cost of natural gas. We all use natural gas boilers to heat water which flows through radiators to warm our rooms. Anybody who heats their house with space heaters is just throwing money away whether it's 100% efficient or not.

    You see more heatpumps these days but that's another thing entirely

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Heat pumps cap out at about 250% 400% efficiency, so you'd still be spending more to run them than to burn natural gas at that ratio.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Heat pumps easily exceed 2.5 COP. More like 4 in the UK climate. And gas isn't 100% efficient either. But yeah it's a wash or can be more expensive to heat with heat pumps where electricity is really expensive. It helps if we all conveniently ignore externalities like pollution and carbon too.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Thanks for the correction, edited. How is gas not 100% efficient, though?

    But yeah, heat pumps are definitely more environmentally friendly (unless you're habitually letting the refrigerant out, o guess). The real argument is whether the extra energy is worth it for protein folding (I'd say generally no, but if you don't have a heat pump, might as well).

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