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Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

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Re: Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

#2

Post by Dewie3 »

I wouldn't even have thought that Helsinki needed that much cooling in the summer. The summer highs aren't that high (Wikipedia), so it's interesting how they still have a large infrastructure for cooling the city.

I don't think I've used air conditioning in the summer before. Though my summers are usually cooler than Helsinki's, apparently.

Re: Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

#3

Post by cgabios »

Stanford has its own cogen steam and chilled water (underground "ice cube") capabilities, in addition to power generation. Many such campuses use the industrial central plant model because it's cheaper and more efficient at scale. Residential areas could leverage this and other utilities (like internet) if people get out there, organize and develop compelling, sustainable operational (quasi-business) models that can compete with for-profit. Because it doesn't make sense to have an entire neighborhood with excess internet capacity and individual wifi boxes, having to have one "own" of everything is demonstrably wasteful compared to "sharing economy" alternatives. (Steam and chilled water as well, since temperature regulation is usually the number one energy consumer in a household without an EV.)

Re: Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

#4

Post by ddeck »

>In fact, the proliferation of air conditioners has increased to such a degree that it has slowly begun to modify humans, lowering our species’ threshold for heat.

What fact would that be? The linked article to support this bold claim is a health advice piece from the University of Iowa suggesting that the average body acclimatizes to warmer or cooler environments over a two-week period.

Re: Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

#5

Post by aspratley »

Dewie3 wrote: post #2

I wouldn't even have thought that Helsinki needed that much cooling in the summer. The summer highs aren't that high (Wikipedia), so it's interesting how they still have a large infrastructure for cooling the city. I don't think I've used air conditioning in the summer before. Though my summers are usually cooler than Helsinki's, apparently.

In a different location but no that far away sea water was/is being used to cool a data center: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/02/21/video...

Re: Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

#6

Post by kriro »

This is a pretty neat concept. Seems like former mining regions might be good testbeds (as long as there's some sort of water supply).

Also interesting that they don't stop at cooling but go for "trigeneration".

Re: Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

#8

Post by [deleted] »

ddeck wrote: post #4

>In fact, the proliferation of air conditioners has increased to such a degree that it has slowly begun to modify humans, lowering our species’ threshold for heat. What fact would that be? The linked article to support this bold claim is a health advice piece from the University of Iowa suggesting that the average body acclimatizes to warmer or cooler environments over a two-week period.

[deleted]

Re: Why Helsinki Feels Like Heaven

#10

Post by 13thLetter »

deckar01 wrote: post #7

This reminds me of fracking. Pumping all of our heat into the earth's crust seems like it could have some long term consequence. If only we could could send our heat into space some how...

The amount of "heat" pumped into the Earth by fracking is meaningless on the unimaginably huge scale of a whole planet, so you can relax.
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