If you ’ve see Helsinki , you ’ve probably spend clip in its leafy Esplanade Park at the center of the metropolis . Now Helsinki has turned the ground below the park into a subterraneous lake which can keep buildings and other civil operation chill as part of a growing connection that supercede traditional air conditioning systems .
Like the way many city harness geothermal heat , Helsinki ’s system of rules utilizes the copious amounts of cold lake water supply which surround the city ( as well as , you cognise , the icy Baltic Sea ) . The tank car , which was blast out 100 yards below the park , is 100 chiliad long and can hold up to nine million gallons of inhuman water supply , which is pump out into the city during the day to cool down the city at its hottest and most active hour . The water supply then then returns to the tank at Nox to chill for the next day .
Esplanade Park endure through the midpoint of Helsinki , and now has the chill lake below
Helsinki ’s root is smart because it allows buildings and brass to partake resource at the metropolis - scale : rather of mandate renewable cooling methods building - by - edifice , and requiring that developers give supernumerary money to execute them , the city is providing the base so the web can go on to grow and enlarge to turn over more buildings .
The urban center says that compared to the environmental impact from formal line conditioning systems need to cool down the same number of buildings , their centralized chilling organisation is emitting about 80 percent less carbon dioxide and other glasshouse gas . Based on energy demand , the city also gauge that the overall Energy Department efficiency is about five time that of a building - specific cool systems .
While some singular buildings have interchangeable , enclosed systems that use cisterns of water to cool various mechanical processes , these “ territorial dominion cooling ” system which cool large portions of cities are a bit more rare . Toronto ’s system , which expend piddle from Lake Ontario , is probably the most celebrated , and there are also systems in Sweden , The Netherlands , and even Cornell University in Ithaca , NY .
But Helsinki ’s is not only extremely comprehensive , it ’s also part of a bombastic cooling system and heating system . They city already lay claim the world ’s largest underground heat energy pump station , namedKatri Vala , which uses “ dominion heating”—absorbing caloric energy from wastewater to warm hoi polloi ’s homes .
While this exact system of rules would n’t make everywhere — Helsinki is n’t recognise for being a particularly hot place for most of the year — even hot countries can adapt their own translation of district cooling system , like Qatar ’s well - brandedQatar Cool . Even though the water there needs to be chilled with infrigidation plants during much of the twelvemonth , it ’s still a more efficient system then take in every building in downtown Doha running its own AC .
While Helsinki ’s model does offer a great example for many other city that desire to move away from expensive , energy - sucking conventional melody conditioning system , it also make up for a great enjoyment of distance . We should have born underground air conditioner under all of our park .
Lake photos by Pekka Nieminen / Helsingin Energia ; Mungo Park exposure by Mika Lappalainen / City of Helsinki ;
Air conditioningCitiesfinlandurbanismWater
Daily Newsletter
Get the good tech , science , and civilization news in your inbox day by day .
News from the future , bear to your present .
You May Also Like
