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We have a similar thing over here, and the cooling capacity is pretty useful. ( https://www.helen.fi/en/housing-companies/cooling-for-housing-companies/cooling-
by korhojoa 3y ago
We have a similar thing over here, and the cooling capacity is pretty useful. ( https://www.helen.fi/en/housing-companies/cooling-for-housing-companies/cooling-for-housing-companies https://www.helen.fi/en/housing-companies/cooling-for-housin... ) As the summers have gotten hotter, this has gotten more common to have a somewhat stable temperature indoors.
Heat pumps allow shifting the temperature that's in the cooling and heating circuits, so you can extract (or add) more heat, making it more effective. This is used to cool data centers and heat homes/offices, so it also allows to move heat between places instead of always having to have a cold sink and a heat source.
Sure, there is electricity warming up the water, but earlier the energy that was used to cool a space was just discarded into the air, now it's gathered and put into the circuit to be useful elsewhere.
Not a gimmick, it saves _a lot_ of energy.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoOK, that makes a TON of sense. Thank you . Your answer implies a circuit, which is logical and explans a lot, but its not what the article is saying directly. The article just has a cold sink (the lake) which is being asked to expand for help. No idea what the heat sources (nuclear reactor, data center) are that could help close the circuit. Maybe this is where the buildings they mention with the expansion, come in? Yet its not clear if article's buildings are actually the heat sources - unlike your explanation, which is pretty clear.
- lazide 3y agoWhen water is returned it's pumped to near the lake's surface, so will rise, cool down, then sink. So it's just providing a higher quality source of 'cold' to make things efficient instead of requiring heat pumps that dump heat to the air directly when it's hot out. Much more efficient overall.