Thermal Energy Network in NYC Subway?

That is the software that we use for the forum, @leonz. Sometimes a post will get blocked if it's too long or if you've posted a bunch within a short period of time (spam blocker). I'm not sure what happened here, but glad you're able to post again.

I've had the pleasure of getting involved with a roughly 20 year old building in the city that was built with a top of the line open loop geothermal system. The Engineers behind it thought they had solved all the buildings cooling and heating needs and the building wouldn't even need the typical cooling towers. Unfortunately issues arose pretty quickly and it turns out the magical top of the line system has been nothing but issues for years. It's been half redesigned by someone who left no documentation, had a cooling tower added to supplement, and it's mainly held together with hopes and prayers at this point.

Anyway, could it be done? with enough time and money almost anything can be done. The optimist in me says what the they propose would be a nice improvement to a space many of use routinely spend a lot of time in. The pessimist in me says it'll be nothing but problems. The realist in me says that it's probably just not worth the cost compared to what benefit there might be.

I have met and talked with some of the hydronics and thermal folks at NYSERDA.

I know they would give an honest assessment based on thermodynamics, basic heat exchange and heat transfer.

I hope they get opinions from , and trust experts like that over political pressure.

Hmmm. Testing- yes, testing the idea, says the above article. Testing the idea seems like a good start rather than blundering into it. I'm sure we can agree we have all seen too much of that.

You should see the size of the heat exchanger fin tube coils at the Lake Source Cooling Plant in Ithaca, New York Bob. The pipeline coming from the University is gravity fed downhill and pushed uphill by the water flowing down hill to the lake source cooling plant.

The lake water is pulled through one pipe passed through the heat exchangers finned tube piping and pumped back into Cayuga Lake with a parallel pipe.

A wide deep trench was blasted out of the limestone bed rock from the foundation of the building to the point where the bed rock ends at deeper water for both pipes and the company Angelica Boring out of Angelica, New York used a tunnel boring machine to bore the twin rock tunnels to the building basement where the twin pipes enter the building.

A very large hydronic unit heater turns the hot air to hot water. I imagine plenty of places to use thermal in NYC, even in NYC. Pipe it to the Mikvahs, they use mega amounts of hot water daily :)

Ot an A2W DHW heat pump, for hgigher efficiencies.