Hackaday: Humanity thus far has supplied most of its electricity needs by burning stuff, mostly very old stuff that burns great but is hard to replace. That stuff is getting increasingly expensive, and the pollution is a bother too, so renewable sources of energy are becoming more popular.
2 comments:
This is such an interesting concept. My first thought instantly went to concert venues as well as venues such as nightclubs; buildings that are typically used as concert venues are also used as different types of performance venues throughout the year, but concerts usually include a lot of moving people and large crowds which would generate a lot of heat. Once that heat is stored it could then be used to heat the events that generate less heat such as an orchestra concert or other type of classical music performance where the audience members are sitting down. It also reminded me of what Coldplay did on their last tour, where they had bikes that audience members could ride during or before the show to help power part of the set that night. When I first saw that Coldplay was doing I thought it was a bit odd but as I saw more of it and I saw videos that they had posted talking about how much energy they were able to store because of what they were doing I realized that it was actually more useful than I had imagined and I only wonder what could come of it if other artists and performance started doing the same thing.
This is such a bizarre concept that simply would never have crossed my mind. I knew that the human body produces a certain amount of heat, but never would I have through it was a substantial enough amount to be captured and stored as energy. Granted, this specific system does not produce electricity, which is the typical assumption of a renewable energy source, but heat is still a remarkably useful tool. I think it is so clever that they use the bedrock beneath their building in the form of a “battery” of sorts to store the heat captured from the people in the club. I would be curious to see how far this system can be expanded – how much volume of rock would be needed to store the heat from something like the One World Trade Center or another massive high rise building? If it is a practical amount, then I think this is a potentially amazing method of a net-neutral heating and cooling system for buildings, even if it is currently expensive.
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