We evaluate the financial viability of Data Furances from the perspective of cloud service providers. Because DFs serve as a primary heat source in homes, we first perform a simulation study to understand the heating demands for a single family house across the climatic zones in the U.S.. Based on the results, we discuss the expected savings if DFs were used in each zone. We use ballpark figures and back-of-the-envelope calculations; the exact numbers depend on the specific households and data centers under consideration.
DFs reduce the total cost of conventional datacenters in three main ways. First, much of the initial capital investment to build the infrastructure for a datacenter is avoided, including real estate, construction costs, and the cost of new power distribution, networking equipment, and other facilities. A second and related benefit is that operating costs are reduced. For example, cooling cost is significant in centralized data centers due to the power density, but DFs have essentially no additional cooling or air circulation costs since the heat distribution system in the house already circulates air. Thus, DFs increase the power usage efficiencies (PUE) over conventional datacenters. Finally, the money to buy and operate a furnace for home heating is avoided, and can be used instead to offset the cost of servers: the cloud service provider can sell DFs at the price of a furnace, and charge household owners for home heating. By doing this, the heating cost remains the same for the host family, while costs are reduced for the cloud service provider.
One disadvantage of DFs is that the retail price of electricity is usually higher in the residential areas by 10% to 50% than industrial areas. Another potential disadvantage is that the network bandwidth can cost more in homes if the home broadband link cannot satisfy the service and a high bandwidth link must be purchased. Finally, maintenance costs will increase because the machines will be geographically distributed.