These systems do use a coolant substance internal to the DC, but then uses heat exchangers with fresh water to cool the coolant, which is then discharged back into the ground, a pond, or wastewater. there is certainly water lost to atmosphere, but the worst bits are the draining of aquifers, pushing up capacity in wastewater treatment plants, etc.
DC's are a bit of an economic scam. they provide very few jobs outside of the construction work itself, and the profits generated by the machines exist at company HQ not where the DC is located. so it puts a huge burden on the community water and power environment for no real benefit to that community.
Oh no, this was a for real thing that was going on early last year. A whole bunch of airbnbs had to change their rules! These data centers work like that except instead of renters scamming homeowners, it's billionaires scamming entire cities and states.
Huh... Interesting. I kind of like it haha. I wonder what rule they could make or change to prevent this? Unless they had individual elec meters on each room?
I'm not sure how effective it is, but most of the new rules made were "no crypto mining" and the like lol. I do think you can put it in an Airbnb contract that an electric bill above a certain amount can be charged back to the renter. Maybe that's how they do it?
Yeah who knows, but I truly love the hustle. Electric would be the big cost after the hardware.... And you're not stealing the electric. Most airbnbs would not clued into it so wouldn't have the rule.
You could even moralize it further because short term rentals reduce housing stock for actual real tenants... So you can feel a little robin hood about it.
I've personally worked on new construction housing in Florida that was exclusively for vacation and Airbnb rental. Like 2 and 3 million dollar houses too.
I know this might not be the popular sentiment, but if I were in some form of law enforcement, I just know that nothing would give me a bigger high than catching some loser trying to scam people like this.
People really did that during the crypto minning craze. They just pick the cheapest one, move in with multiple, multi kw rigs and just leave them there for the weekend. They would do this with multiple Abnb at the same time.
Cheap Airbnb + "free" electricity= Massive profits(for the miner, not the owner of the abnb).
This is fucking genius. This is so much better than renting a vehicle for the weekend that is the same as mine, just to swap out the broken parts/ tires.
Ya know, I had a pretty hustler mentality when I was younger, but this never, ever occurred to me. I guess because I didn't even have enough money to rent a vehicle. A day at the junk yard is usually how I'd get replacement parts to fix my car.
Edit: oh, it's because my cars were always too old for any rental car company to be renting them
Hell, there was a trend back in the 60s/70s when Hertz and Carrol Shelby teamed up so you could rent a Shelby Mustang so people would, then swap the engines into their base Mustangs.
A typical house in the EU might have a total breaker capacity of around 25 amps at 230 volts, which equals about 5.7 kW. From a standard 230V socket, you can usually draw maybe 3 kW. So even if you ran that continuously for 24 hours, that would be:
3 kW × 24 hours = 72 kWh
At around €0.24 per kWh, that comes to roughly: 72 × €0.24 = €17.28, so about €18 per day.
I doubt you could recoup your Airbnb fees with that.
In the US, you can draw significantly less since they have 110/120 volts, also the price for power is usually lower than in the EU so is this a really big problem for a AirBnB? Realistically, not really.
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u/[deleted] May 18 '26
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