Paris Subway Riders to Heat Apartment Building
I wrote on Cleantechnica last week about a pilot project where the kinetic energy created from subway trains in Philadelphia braking will be used to power accelerating trains, stored for future use by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), or sold back to the grid. While that is one of the coolest projects I’ve heard about it awhile, the following project in Paris may even trump that one.
A building in Paris is going to start getting heat from the warm bodies waiting around in a Metro station nearby, as well as from the heat created by the Metro trains running back and forth along the rails.
I wouldn’t think that they’d be able to pull a ton of heat from the Metro station, but apparently it will be enough to heat 17 apartments and reduce the building’s carbon emissions by about one third.
However, unlike the Philadelphia pilot project mentioned above, which is to be expanded across the subway system and maybe even in other subway systems around the country if it goes well, this experimental project in Paris may just be a one-location thing.
A stairwell connecting the building to the Metro station will be used as a conduit for the heat, but finding a way to connect other buildings to Metro stations is considered to be too expensive compared to the potential benefits.
Still, though, it seems that someone could find a way to do this efficiently, saving more money and reducing carbon emissions further, if they tried. And in any case, this is an interesting stand-alone project.
Any more info on this sort of thing? Any comments on this project in particular? Feel free to share below.
Photo Credit: didier.goas via flickr
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