this post was submitted on 19 May 2026
633 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
84828 readers
5507 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you plug the numbers into the Carnot equation, it looks like the maximum theoretical efficiency of a thermoelectric generator operating at that temperature gradient is about 0.75%. And, I could be wrong, but my assumption would be any attempt to reclaim that energy would slow its exchange and potentially bottleneck a cooling system to some extent.
The issue is you are using 4 degrees as the delta of temp, when that is the ambient area temp change. The very localized heat being generated on site (and already nicely conveyed in heat management systems) is going to be a lot more then 4. Also why would you be always using a thermometric generator? They are not know to be efficient.
Good point about the local temperature delta.. I kind of lost sight of that in the discussion. But my understanding of that equation is it would be the maximum theoretical efficiency of any thermal generator as it represents an idealized heat engine.
I mean good, we should do everything possible to make these data centers as unnefficient as they are unnecessary.