Inhabitat » Hot Swedes Use Body Heat to Heat Train Station

January 13, 2008

Hot Swedes Use Body Heat to Heat Train Station

by Jorge Chapa

Hot Swedes Will Use Body Heat to Heat Train Station, body heat building heat, body heat to heat buildings, human energy, people power, alternative energy, design innovation, sweden, stockholm central station

Move over sun and wind power… the next frontier in renewable energy is people power! And no, we don’t mean them being used as in soylent green, but rather, to use the energy generated from the movement of large numbers of pedestrians through an occupied space. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense: people power is cheap and plentiful. People are an infinitely renewable resource in a public space, since they are moving around and coming and going all day long. We’re excited to announce that plans are now afoot to take the heat energy generated by the movement of human beings and use it to heat a train station in Sweden.

heat, energy, people, power, alternative, innovative, sweden, stockholm central station

Built in 1871, Stockholm Central Station is the largest train station in the country and in the Nordic region. Around 250,000 persons pass through it every day. It is the heat generated from these visitors that the state owned company, Jernhuset, wants to use for heating the new complex which will include an office building, a hotel and a retail section. How does it work? quite simply, the heat generated will warm up water running through pipes which will be installed in the station. The water will be pumped to the new building and used to heat the spaces inside.

“This is old technology, but used in a new way. It’s just pipes, water and pumps, but we haven’t heard of anyone else using this technology in this way before,” said Karl Sundholm leader for the new project.

+ People power to warm new building in Stockholm

25 Responses to “Hot Swedes Use Body Heat to Heat Train Station”

Sam Says:

January 13th, 2008 at 10:54 pm

Do they realize this will also cool the train station? It’s just moving heat from one place to another. That’s fine if they want the station cooler than the other buildings, but if not they’ll have to make up for it with more artificial heating.

First law of thermodynamics: You can’t win.

I mean, I imagine someone working on the project understands entropy, but the article fails to convince me that this is anything, uh, useful.

Inhabitat Reader Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 2:50 am

Didn’t you just post this story last week?? Confused…

Alexi Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 3:43 am

Article is not definitely not clear. How actually this heat is being extracted? I’m not a scientist but i can imagine how it works in the case of Energy Passive Gym ( reviewed here at Inhabitat) when people transform their kinetic movement into electricity via sport sımulators. But what happens in this case? What is the principle? Even if it works i think the heat gains are minimal. Please correct me if i’m wrong

Karl Sundholm Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 4:26 am

Hi Sam.

Yes, we do realise that. We do actually have way to much heat in the Central station today. It is that heat that will be transferred to this new building, we might even reduce the amount of cooling needed in the Central station because of this. We do understand entropy (a couple of MSc in the project), but information is often sorted out by the journalists.

The first law of thermodynimica, often called T1, does not say “You can´t win”, it says “Energy can not be created or destroyed, only transferred” which is exactly what we are doing here.

Check out some pictures of the building on http://www.kungsbrohuset.se (Texts only in swedish, sorry).

If you want more information you can find me through our office. +46 8 410 626 00

Regards Karl

T. Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 5:15 am

I think it’s a great idea to reuse energy in this way in a public building.
Also, living in Stockholm, I know that the Central Station is more in need of beeing cooled down than heated up. As it is now I believe that the heat is simply let to pass through openings in the ceiling, so this is a way of reusing waste heat.

wlai Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 5:20 am

The linked to article explains that they have excess heat in the station, and that’s what they are using to heat the other building.

Quote: “All people produce heat, and that heat is in fact fairly difficult to get rid of. Instead of opening windows and letting all that heat go to waste we want to harness it through the ventilation system,” Sundholm said.

EC Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 5:22 am

^ what Sam might have missed is that people are constantly arriving and leaving the station. your heat source is constantly replenishing. it isn’t a closed system.

The really interesting part would be how efficiently they can harvest the warmth from people. (even if it’s just a pre-heating system for more conventional heating)

J Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 6:01 am

@Sam

The train station currently uses a lot of cooling. It has a glass roof (trapping a lot of heat) and almost every single commuter going to and from the city centre moves through the central station. It’s hot in the winters and extremely hot during the summers (I guess this won’t be of much use during the summers tho’).

russ Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 6:08 am

So how the f*ck do they do it???
Thats why I came to look at this post! to find out how!????

Mark Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 6:13 am

The Mall of America in Minnesota has been heated by people only since it was built without any artificial heating.

uker Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 6:29 am

That s a good idea if can be practical. I suggest whether the station can be covered maximum to prevent heat loss.

Carl Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 6:41 am

I actually live in stockholm and while I must say that it’s a nice enough idea I think it’s more of PR thingy and crazy *what-if-idea* than anything else. It could probably be made to work but then you’d have to insulate the entire train station very well. Because I don’t think it’s very well isolated today, it never needed to be… it’s warm anyway.

But what we’re talking about is basically advanced solutions on how to heat or cool air with exiting ait before it enters a building, heat exchangers and insulation and so forth.

Famer Joe Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 7:25 am

@Sam
Do you realize that these guys are probably not playing around and have probably done calculations to see if this will work or not?

Fred Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 7:54 am

Obviously, the passangers moving through the train station warms up the place more than needed. So instead of using a cooling system to get the temperature down, they transport the heat to the next building. Clever indeed.

John Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 8:38 am

This technology is as old as warm blooded mammals. Hardly revolutionary.

Danijela Brunette Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 8:57 am

~KISSING STATION~
Let’s use energy of love, power of emotions :)!
If everybody kiss in station —> enough energy for two buildings? ;)

Jamie Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 9:55 am

Yeah, you’re right Sam, they are probably blowing their money without doing any research.

Sam Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

Well, thanks to those who clarified what is actually being done. Unfortunately, the reporting in this post is entirely misleading… despite explicit wording to the contrary, the train station is being *cooled*, not heated. And a single mention that the station is too hot year-round (although it sounds like this is largely due to solar gain rather than people) would have made things a lot clearer.

Otherwise, it just sounds like what Danijela said, using the energy of “love, power and emotions”. Real advances come from ideas grounded in science, not just good vibes. It would be great to see some more scientific information in these posts.

And that’s awesome that the Mall of America doesn’t have a central heating system… I didn’t know that. It’s huge but also not a high rise, and that’s probably part of the reason it works; lots of volume relative to surface area.

(Oh, and “You can’t win” comes from the facetious Ginsberg’s Theorem: http://hfreeman.wordpress.com/2006/12/24/3/ The point is that you can’t just create energy and “win”, despite the way that much popular reporting makes it sound. It’s all coming from somewhere else.)

Nick Simpson Says:

January 14th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Hey John, you might be right, but those technologies are often the best ones… As for Danijela, I’m not sure what you’re advocating, but hey, in for a penny…

Johan Says:

January 16th, 2008 at 11:45 am

This is great, it is usually the “simple” things that works, almost like the virtual world and if not gathering the heat out of travellers replacing travels all together with collaboration services. Some organisations are really looking into to this http://www.genesys.com/uk/green

Emma Says:

January 16th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

What happens on the days when people dont use the trains but stay in hotels? Like Christmas day?

beand Says:

January 16th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

@sam:
come on sam, you don’t have to come up with thermodynamics. that’s not why this concept may not work..

Damon Says:

January 16th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

Why do they try to transfer the heat to the water system? Why not duct the (filtered) hot air directly to where it’s needed in the other buildings?

Damon Says:

January 16th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

I think I’ve answered my own question….because the thermal storage capacity of air is very low the wamred air would have to be coninually extracted and used straight away. The water exchange method has much greater thermal storage capacity and the fluid can be used at a later time for heating other areas.