Thesis Economic Feasibility of solar-powered, server-based Heating in Private Households (aGw*)
One way for improving energy efficiency is using the same energy for multiple purposes. One typical example is using steam from power plants for district heating.
Similarly, waste heat from large integrated data centers can also be used for district heating, however conventional air-cooling of servers yields in comparably low efficiency of waste heat re-use.
Recent developments in immersive cooling of compute hardware facilitates a far higher efficiency of more than 95%, i.e. more than 95% of the electrical energy used for data processing within a server can be re-used as thermal energy.
Immersive cooling of servers can also be done at smaller scales than those of large integrated data centers, e.g. in small-scale units which fit into private households or SMEs.
A potential deployment of server-based heating systems in industrial and office buildings is already under investigation. Also, solutions for a deployment in private households have been offered in the past already, which however were economically not very successful.
Your new challenges:
Within this thesis the potential of a new generation of server-based heating in private households shall be conducted. In particular, the scenario of using excess power generated by solar panels for heating up fresh water for private households shall be investigated.
In brief, excess solar power is already used today to heat fresh water for private household consumption, either through direct electrical boilers or through heat pumps. Using server-based heating would facilitate double use of the same amount of energy for data processing and heating. Using excess solar energy for such heating rather than submitting such energy to the grid at low levels of compensation aims at further improving the business case and the carbon footprint compared to using brown energy from the grid.
In order to provide a conclusion on the economic feasibility of server-based heating for private households this thesis should
- Assess the energy budget available from solar panels for average private households throughout the year,
- Evaluate the resulting heat budget distribution over time and its suitability to cover the heat demand of an average household
- Analyze the total build and operational cost and calculate business case options
- Conclude on the economic feasibility depending on the minimum size of the installation and the minimum price for compute services to be sold
Your strong profile:
- This thesis topic is suitable for students in economics, computer science, business informatics, etc. in bachelor or master study courses
- Supervision of the thesis will be provided by Prof. Dr. Stephan Recker, FH Dortmund and Sophia Sailer, Lindner Group
- For formal recognition, a supervisor at your university is typically needed
Your benefits:
- Work in a motivated and experienced team that promotes your personal and professional development
- Flexible working hours that can be ideally combined with your studies
- Opportunity to apply your theoretical knowledge in practice and gain valuable experience
- Work can be done completely remotely, depending on where you live
*all genders welcome
