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The ice machine that chills Chicago’s skyscrapers
- manicennui 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_cooling
- vgeek 3y agoI went on a tour of the facilities building (only like 3 people showed up) during college in New Orleans and saw their district cooling system up close-- it looks boring, but you appreciate it that much more when you were on the far end of campus in a building not connected to the system on 85 degree days. This falls into the neat stuff that people overlook, like the water tanks and skyscrapers or how storm drains work.
- shigawire 3y agoThere was a recent video on this from a YouTube channel that often covers Chicago architecture and urban planning topics. https://youtu.be/_Bvg7x7uAdk https://youtu.be/_Bvg7x7uAdk
- MDWolinski 3y agoStewart Hicks has many great videos focused on Chicago architecture.
- manicennui 3y agoThis is exactly where I learned about Chicago's district cooling.
- dennisnedry 3y agoFor anybody wondering, the AC in these buildings can become very cold, so it’s quite an efficient system. I kind of liken it to NYC’s shared steam .
- EricE 3y agoWill be interesting to see if electric car charging at night screws up their current economic model.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoGood point. It also makes me think of solar, which isn't going to be available at night. But also, that area has some of the worst solar availability in the US, so that's less of a concern than it could be. https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html
- vgeek 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm This is right down the road, so maybe wind has more potential in the area?
- jauntywundrkind 3y agohttps://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind-resource-maps.html https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind-resource-maps.html is the corresponding map resources for wind. I was expecting this was going to be a great point & be exceedingly promising, but the maps there show acceptable but not great wind density. As we get closer to appalacia the wind speeds really pick up. Im also surprised to see even lower wind density in Kansas, which I think of as a state overrun with wind-farms. The availability of land surely factors in, but gee, there just looks like there's so much more wind on the east coast & the south.
- vgeek 3y agoWV has a few farms, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Storm_Wind_Farm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Storm_Wind_Farm is the largest I have seen (super scenic area-- WV is beautiful and has lots of interesting history). It is located next to a sizable coal fired plant. Unfortunately other states in the area (like KY) are openly hostile towards renewables-- virtually 0 wind and limited solar installations. What about Iowa? There seem to be lots of turbines near highways-- more so than the Indiana farms.
- jmpman 3y agoI wish this was an option for home scale, using solar generation to create the ice during the day, for cooling needs at night. I live in the desert, so no shortage of solar energy, but require cooling at night. A Tesla power wall couldn’t fulfill my nighttime cooling needs for a reasonable price, but a huge block of ice, would be a perfect thermal battery.
- bradknowles 3y agoThere are these things called "ice bears". Could they be what you're looking for? See https://inhabitat.com/efficient-ice-battery-provides-247-coo https://inhabitat.com/efficient-ice-battery-provides-247-coo... for one article.
- dragontamer 3y agoIce Bear went out of business years ago. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/thermal-storage-evangelist-ice-energy-files-for-bankruptcy https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/thermal-storage... They tried... and failed... to make this a successful business. Maybe in a few years when people become aware of the technological possibilities. Turns out a 500 gallon vat of water can store a lot of cooling / energy, and its not so expensive to make either. ------- The name and technology has been sold. Maybe they'll reappear in a few years?
- turtlebits 3y agoHook up a chest freezer (or multiple) to solar, then use radiant tubing to distribute the cold water at night. Or better yet, superinsulate your house, cool your entire house with solar during the day and it should stay cool enough overnight.
- Scoundreller 3y agoAnd in winter time, put liquid water in that freezer, when it freezes, dump the ice outside, repeat. With enough milk jugs and a long enough time period, you won’t even have much of a water bill. The neighbours might complain about your “unsightly” pile of water jugs, but you’re saving the world while they’re destroying it.
- qilo 3y agohttps://archive.is/H3LNT https://archive.is/H3LNT
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago"as climate change impacts our weather" Global warming. Say it. Stop pussyfooting around it.
- tda 3y agoMaybe it is me, but superficially I find "temperature rises with 1.5 degrees" sounds less scary than "past observations of weather 'i.e. climate' have lost their predictive value. We have no clue how cold/hot/wet/dry it will get here but it will be different than what this place is designed for so you're f*d either way"
- midoridensha 3y agoIt seems like a lot of energy could be saved by, instead of building tall skyscrapers that need cooling, building deep tower-like structures underground. If these "silos" are over 100 stories deep, they would naturally be cool, just like caves are.
- aziaziazi 3y agoOne of the reason some people choose to chill in caves. Probably not their primary habitat but surely a nice cool place when temperatures goes far high or low. 40000 years later, I go in my basement on summer peak hours (nap, working on my laptop, reading…) It’s not cosy but I’m feeling very lucky to have this free and always available 18C room.
- fennecfoxy 3y agoOr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher
- emmelaich 3y agoWhere does the heat go from this? Just up in the air?
- joezydeco 3y agoYup. The entire roof is full of radiators and fans that blow straight up into the night air.
- olgeni 3y ago"This content is not available in your country/region" as I browse from the war-torn hellhole that is... Europe :|
- theshrike79 3y agoAmerican companies do this when it’s easier to ignore hundreds of millions of people than it is to respect people’s privacy
- unyttigfjelltol 3y agoOr, when their scope is entirely local and they don't have the capacity to simultaneously master all the world's laws in every sovereign nation with access to the Internet.
- ubercore 3y agoWonder when they'll start blocking visitors from California.
- tuyiown 3y agoTwo imaginary thought from people at wgntv.com: 1. a quick legal risk assessment showed that an international lawsuit against us on US ground, since we don't operate in their country, lawsuit to apply their local laws on US juridiction, is a lawsuit whose the risk that we could loose is very real and we should take measures to block traffic. 2. Someone asked about legal implication of International traffic. No idea. Let's block everything non-US just to be sure, I'm not sure those people exist anyway.
- Scoundreller 3y agoSeems like there’s a startup opportunity to create a box these orgs can buy that splits off the non-US traffic and serves privacy-preserving content with only (localized) Google ads to increase your ad revenue (maybe) a few percent.
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- Reason077 3y agoToronto has something similar to this, but instead of a massive water chiller, there’s a set of 3-mile long intake pipes from the permanently cold (4°C / 39F) deep waters of Lake Ontario. The Deep Lake Water Cooling (DLWC) system supplies over 75 buildings in downtown Toronto and dramatically reduces energy consumption compared to traditional chillers. Curious that they can’t do this in Chicago, too. Are Lake Michigan’s waters that much warmer, shallower than Lake Ontario?
- Scoundreller 3y agoTo partly answer your question, Lake Michigan isn’t that deep close to Chicago, so it doesn’t stratify to have that constant 4C depth of water nearby. Contrast that to Toronto on Lake Ontario where the depths (and temperatures) drop off quickly: Lake Michigan (Chicago is near the bottom left): https://www.mlive.com/resizer/ShCu4LXkI1ioIVtd5mmLimlPt_M=/800x0/smart/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/advancelocal/NIVILEEL6RGSRBKO3ZEIC5KHQE.gif https://www.mlive.com/resizer/ShCu4LXkI1ioIVtd5mmLimlPt_M=/8... Lake Ontario: (Toronto is right where it’s bluest/coldest): https://www.mlive.com/resizer/13wrdcYuMUdx3A_4kycmNO_XhpY=/800x0/smart/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/advancelocal/V6WC3F7LV5AV7IMUIUFSUWUTGY.gif https://www.mlive.com/resizer/13wrdcYuMUdx3A_4kycmNO_XhpY=/8... Source article: https://www.mlive.com/weather/2020/08/see-how-cold-it-is-at-the-bottom-of-the-great-lakes-this-summer.html https://www.mlive.com/weather/2020/08/see-how-cold-it-is-at-... Toronto’s system works with heat-exchangers on incoming municipal water. Possibly working with already warmer water would present in-system microbial growth issues in Chicago. I think Toronto’s intake pipes were intentionally that deep because that water mixes the least with crap (literal and figurative) from the surface, not to make this cooling system more efficient. The downside is that city users get warmer than otherwise water in summer, so their own A/Cs need to work a bit harder with the warmer water in your toilet tank and pipe work. And commercial/industrial evaporative air conditioners are starting off with slightly warmer water. But water heaters have a bit less work to do (great if resistive, bad if heat pump). And of course, chilly water in winter (but it is nice to be able to get pretty cool tap water year round).
- Reason077 3y agoThe three long, deep-water intake pipes were built as part of the original DWLC project, commissioned in 2004. Access to deep cold water is an important benefit of the system, but you're correct that they have a dual purpose, and access to cleaner water for the municipal supply was presumably a side benefit. As part of a system expansion, they are currently building a 4th intake which would re-use one of the original, shallower municipal water intakes which was obsoleted by the 2004 system. This would be extended to reach colder water and would bypass the city water treatment plant to deliver raw water directly to the DLWC: https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/public-consultations/infrastructure-projects/deep-lake-water-cooling-expansion-study/ https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/public-...
- jwr 3y ago"This content is not available in your country/region." In other words, this content is not on the internet and should not be posted to HN.
- jgrahamc 3y agoTo be fair there's a correlation between this and poor writing and crappy journalist. So I consider it a plus.
- criddell 3y agoI never knew there were central air conditioning plants that serve multiple buildings. One in the article provides cooling to 115 buildings! I thought this article was interesting.
- aziaziazi 3y ago> should not be posted How do you expect OP to know/check if the article is available in anyone region? Following your though there’s plenty of content that should not be posted here because not available in PRC. I was also (very) pissed off to see that blocker. HN magic came into the rescue and someone posted an archive link. Not sure if it has been proposed before, but a field for alt link would be nice.
- jwr 3y agoI do not expect the OP to know that (he must have seen the article in order to read it and post it), but I do expect HN to remove this sort of thing. We are getting an increasingly fragmented world with walled gardens or silly exclusions. This is not something we should tolerate. It's discrimination and is against the spirit of the Internet. Rewarding sites that exclude and discriminate is not something HN should do. I think HN should have a policy "if it's not on the internet, we don't link to it". That includes paywalled content, regionally-restricted content, and anything else that is not on the Internet. Your PRC argument is flawed. PRC self-censors and you don't get Internet in the PRC, you get a state-censored version. I'm talking about discriminating at the source.
- throw0101a 3y agoAlso done in Toronto, Canada (started in 1969): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enwave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enwave * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Lake_Water_Cooling_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Lake_Water_Cooling_System * https://www.enwave.com/locations.htm https://www.enwave.com/locations.htm
- lloydatkinson 3y ago> This content is not available in your country/region. Is this still a thing? The absolute state of the internet…