It's a common story: showers use a lot of hot water. That water is both expensive and bad for the environment since it takes a lot of energy to heat. What if that wasn't the case, though? Thanks to Dutch company Nerdalize, there is indeed a solution.
Use a server to heat your water for free
The problem is in company's data centers, too. If you leave your laptop running for a while, it heats up, and the same is true for servers - but the servers malfunction under too much heat, and so companies are forced to spend a lot of money and waste a lot of energy on cooling the buildings.
Instead, Nerdalize is fixing the problem for both companies and private citizens in one fell swoop.
When you purchase Nerdalize's Heating System, the price is one-time-only. An engineer comes to your house and installs the server. The energy and data used by the servers are paid for by Nerdalize, which means that your water is being heated for free. In addition, every installation, according to the Verge, helps to decrease a household's carbon footprint by 3 tons. Also, it is estimated to save households around 336 U.S. dollars - or three hundred euros - and decrease costs for companies by as much as 50%.
Even Nerdalize's server heaters has problems
Although the idea of free hot showers and increased environmental protection is appealing, there are issues with Nerdalize's revolutionary system. Already, the heating system has been re-worked. Originally, the servers were meant to be standalone room heaters, with the first prototypes released for testing in 2015. Unfortunately, the heaters could only heat a small room and took an hour to heat up from resting.
Even with the heating system focusing on water, there are potential conflicts. Some companies may be uncomfortable with the idea of having the information held on their servers in private homes, and Nerdalize is relying on selling the space for the servers to other companies.
Additionally, although the benefit of free heating is very exciting, both economically and environmentally, not all private homes want the responsibility of allowing an engineer into their home to fix a malfunctioning server.
The success of Nerdalize's heating system is up to you!
Nerdalize's company is mainly crowdfunded, so if the people want to see the heating system expand and stay around, it is up to everyone to donate to their crowdfunding campaign. Already, the first goal has been met, with a secondary goal of half a million euros in the works. Whether this is worth it as an environmental protection plan, or a money-saving technique remains to be seen, but Nerdalize has a lot of eyes on it in the coming years.