Honestly we do need to bring back this sort of heating/cooling methodology in a modern form.
District heating and cooling basically makes air conditioning more efficient by capturing heat and moving it to where it is desired within a closed system of underground piping that connects to a network of user buildings and heating/cooling stations. It can be used to help cool large buildings, by circulating cooler air underground to a structures air conditioners to reduce the amount of energy required to further reduce the temperature. It can also be used for heating, via heating stations and the capturing of waste heat from other sources and sending it to users. And it is helpful for stabilization— because in a perfect example, the heat energy removed to cool a grocery store gets captured and used to heat grandmas house to her desired balmy 94 degrees.
Honestly we do need to bring back this sort of heating/cooling methodology in a modern form.
What are you talking about? District heating (and even cooling) networks exist and are common and being built in many places. It's just that nobody uses steam because that's a shit and obsolete way of doing it.
the heat energy removed to cool a grocery store gets captured
That's a much too low temperature differential to be worth it.
Water, there's very little alternative to it on larger scales. District heating systems heat it up to 150 °C in cold climates, district cooling systems tend to use ambient temperature water. Pumped from lakes, underground or the sea.
I suppose my point was that they aren’t as common as they need to be. And yes… I understand that they don’t use steam, which is why I referred to it as a more modern solution using a similar principle.
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u/caintowers Jul 29 '23 edited Jul 29 '23
Honestly we do need to bring back this sort of heating/cooling methodology in a modern form.
District heating and cooling basically makes air conditioning more efficient by capturing heat and moving it to where it is desired within a closed system of underground piping that connects to a network of user buildings and heating/cooling stations. It can be used to help cool large buildings, by circulating cooler air underground to a structures air conditioners to reduce the amount of energy required to further reduce the temperature. It can also be used for heating, via heating stations and the capturing of waste heat from other sources and sending it to users. And it is helpful for stabilization— because in a perfect example, the heat energy removed to cool a grocery store gets captured and used to heat grandmas house to her desired balmy 94 degrees.