Public officials are looking into whether extreme heat could one day be eliminated from New York City\u2019s subway system, by redirecting it away from station platforms via something known as a thermal energy network.<\/p>\n
Specifically, an $800,000 feasibility study is being conducted at the interconnected Chambers Street and Brooklyn-Bridge City Hall stations in Lower Manhattan, with the hope of channeling any captured excess heat upwards towards municipal buildings during the winter. In addition to cooling off passengers at the station, such a system would save energy, according to city officials.<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYC Comptroller Mark Levine joined MTA Chairman Janno Lieber to hype the possibility of such an energy system at an Aug. 10 press conference at the subway station in question.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to tell any New Yorker that it is brutal underground in the summertime,\u201d Lieber said, singling out the City Hall subway stop as an \u201cespecially\u201d stark example of such temperatures.<\/p>\n
\u201cBringing down temperature is a really complex challenge in a system where the stations are 100 years old and they have open entrances, stairways, vents,\u201d Lieber added. \u201cAs I always say, the subway is not a submarine, it is not a closed environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Mamdani noted that the \u201cthermal network energy feasibility study will explore the possibility\u201d of heating multiple municipal buildings situated above the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall stop, including the David Dinkins Building and City Hall, during winter months.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo do so, we would capture heat in boreholes that would run 500 to 600 feet underground,\u201d Mamdani said, which would then be transported through \u201ca system of circulating pumps and pipes…to warm the offices where our municipal workers are hard at work, powering this incredible city.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would be the first thermal energy system of its kind in any American transit system,\u201d he added. Indeed, Mamdani pointed out that old blueprints for the station included cooling fans connected to groundwater pumps, which the newly-proposed thermal energy study\u2014while different in some respects\u2014is taking inspiration from.<\/p>\n
Comptroller Levine, who spoke next, compared the hottest temperatures at the station to \u201can oven.\u201d He also acknowledged certain complications that already face the implementation of such a system, namely the fact that heat trapped in the City Hall station is not \u201cin the same location\u201d as the \u201cplace we need to get it to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The buildings that would receive the heat are also located in various jurisdictions and belong to various owners, Levine said, adding a further hurdle that the feasibility study will have to address.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, he clarified that the technology that would make up the \u201cunderlying mechanics\u201d of the system\u2014heat pumps and thermal transfers\u2013are not as \u201cexotic\u201d as they sound, as they\u2019ve been \u201cused successfully all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
NY Governor Kathy Hochul, who has state control over the MTA, issued a statement that made clear her excitement over the feasibility project; she did not attend the press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking with Mayor Mamdani and the MTA, we are harnessing cutting-edge climate technology for a truly cool purpose: making our subway stations tolerable during the summer and heating critical city buildings during the winter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public officials are looking into whether extreme heat could one day be eliminated from New York City\u2019s subway…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63,120586],"class_list":["post-319867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-thermal-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}