The ice machine that chills Chicago’s skyscrapers | Hacker News Reader

The ice machine that chills Chicago’s skyscrapers

wgntv.com

90 pointsmanicennui65 comments

I went on a tour of the facilities building (only like 3 people showed up) during college in New Orleans and saw their district cooling system up close-- it looks boring, but you appreciate it that much more when you were on the far end of campus in a building not connected to the system on 85 degree days. This falls into the neat stuff that people overlook, like the water tanks and skyscrapers or how storm drains work.

Toronto has something similar to this, but instead of a massive water chiller, there’s a set of 3-mile long intake pipes from the permanently cold (4°C / 39F) deep waters of Lake Ontario.

The Deep Lake Water Cooling (DLWC) system supplies over 75 buildings in downtown Toronto and dramatically reduces energy consumption compared to traditional chillers.

Curious that they can’t do this in Chicago, too. Are Lake Michigan’s waters that much warmer, shallower than Lake Ontario?

To partly answer your question, Lake Michigan isn’t that deep close to Chicago, so it doesn’t stratify to have that constant 4C depth of water nearby. Contrast that to Toronto on Lake Ontario where the depths (and temperatures) drop off quickly:

Lake Michigan (Chicago is near the bottom left): https://www.mlive.com/resizer/ShCu4LXkI1ioIVtd5mmLimlPt_M=/8...

Lake Ontario: (Toronto is right where it’s bluest/coldest): https://www.mlive.com/resizer/13wrdcYuMUdx3A_4kycmNO_XhpY=/8...

Source article: https://www.mlive.com/weather/2020/08/see-how-cold-it-is-at-...

Toronto’s system works with heat-exchangers on incoming municipal water. Possibly working with already warmer water would present in-system microbial growth issues in Chicago.

I think Toronto’s intake pipes were intentionally that deep because that water mixes the least with crap (literal and figurative) from the surface, not to make this cooling system more efficient.

The downside is that city users get warmer than otherwise water in summer, so their own A/Cs need to work a bit harder with the warmer water in your toilet tank and pipe work. And commercial/industrial evaporative air conditioners are starting off with slightly warmer water. But water heaters have a bit less work to do (great if resistive, bad if heat pump). And of course, chilly water in winter (but it is nice to be able to get pretty cool tap water year round).

The three long, deep-water intake pipes were built as part of the original DWLC project, commissioned in 2004. Access to deep cold water is an important benefit of the system, but you're correct that they have a dual purpose, and access to cleaner water for the municipal supply was presumably a side benefit.

As part of a system expansion, they are currently building a 4th intake which would re-use one of the original, shallower municipal water intakes which was obsoleted by the 2004 system. This would be extended to reach colder water and would bypass the city water treatment plant to deliver raw water directly to the DLWC:

https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/public-...

Highly recommend using the Great Lakes Bathymetry page, much better detail on lake depths, as well as shape files and data :)

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/great-lakes-bathymetry

Lake Ontario (The dot that says "Toronto" is the airport. Toronto the city continues well to the east, and the water intake pipes go out into the lake in the section where it gets very deep very quickly, almost as if they planned it well or something):

https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/images/ontario_wallsize_...

Lake Michigan near Chicago (Chicago has two active municipal water intake cribs, both about 2.5 miles out into the lake. The water is only about 30-40 feet deep at those points):

https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/images/michigan_wallsize...

Detroit's water is similarly brought in from an intake a few miles off the shores of Lake Huron. Similar depth of 30-40ft.

Yeah. The Great Lakes generally aren't very deep near the shore. Toronto is really lucky. If Mississauga or Oshawa wanted to build the same system, they would need pipes 2-3x further into the lake!

The only other Great Lakes city I can think of that could replicate this kind of system without too much trouble would be Traverse City, MI. The Grand Traverse Bay is ridiculously deep. Of course, they don't have any need...

> Toronto is really lucky.

Not if you want to go swimming and there’s any wind at all!

There was a recent video on this from a YouTube channel that often covers Chicago architecture and urban planning topics.

https://youtu.be/_Bvg7x7uAdk

Stewart Hicks has many great videos focused on Chicago architecture.

This is exactly where I learned about Chicago's district cooling.

https://archive.is/H3LNT

"This content is not available in your country/region" as I browse from the war-torn hellhole that is... Europe :|

American companies do this when it’s easier to ignore hundreds of millions of people than it is to respect people’s privacy

Or, when their scope is entirely local and they don't have the capacity to simultaneously master all the world's laws in every sovereign nation with access to the Internet.

Wonder when they'll start blocking visitors from California.

Two imaginary thought from people at wgntv.com:

1. a quick legal risk assessment showed that an international lawsuit against us on US ground, since we don't operate in their country, lawsuit to apply their local laws on US juridiction, is a lawsuit whose the risk that we could loose is very real and we should take measures to block traffic.

2. Someone asked about legal implication of International traffic. No idea. Let's block everything non-US just to be sure, I'm not sure those people exist anyway.

Seems like there’s a startup opportunity to create a box these orgs can buy that splits off the non-US traffic and serves privacy-preserving content with only (localized) Google ads to increase your ad revenue (maybe) a few percent.

I’m from southamerica and I can access the article. They must be explicitly blocking Europe

Yes, actually, after thoughts I suspect that wgntv.com is just using third party provider that operates in europe and asks wgntv.com to implement GDPR compliance or refuse traffic by contract.

For anybody wondering, the AC in these buildings can become very cold, so it’s quite an efficient system. I kind of liken it to NYC’s shared steam .

"This content is not available in your country/region."

In other words, this content is not on the internet and should not be posted to HN.

To be fair there's a correlation between this and poor writing and crappy journalist. So I consider it a plus.

I never knew there were central air conditioning plants that serve multiple buildings. One in the article provides cooling to 115 buildings!

I thought this article was interesting.

> should not be posted

How do you expect OP to know/check if the article is available in anyone region?

Following your though there’s plenty of content that should not be posted here because not available in PRC.

I was also (very) pissed off to see that blocker. HN magic came into the rescue and someone posted an archive link. Not sure if it has been proposed before, but a field for alt link would be nice.

I do not expect the OP to know that (he must have seen the article in order to read it and post it), but I do expect HN to remove this sort of thing. We are getting an increasingly fragmented world with walled gardens or silly exclusions. This is not something we should tolerate. It's discrimination and is against the spirit of the Internet.

Rewarding sites that exclude and discriminate is not something HN should do.

I think HN should have a policy "if it's not on the internet, we don't link to it". That includes paywalled content, regionally-restricted content, and anything else that is not on the Internet.

Your PRC argument is flawed. PRC self-censors and you don't get Internet in the PRC, you get a state-censored version. I'm talking about discriminating at the source.

this to me is nonsense.

the article is available on the internet. you can freely access it from almost anywhere.

the problem is that the politicians of the day of some regions (china, australia, european union etc) decided that the freely available internet does not really fit with their worldview. as such they created rules that in effect split their internet from others.

this naturally lead to a mass adoption of things like https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/451...

luckily, at least for now, those regions still have access to VPN.

No, the website specifically refuses to provide the content to a range of IP addresses (anything not in the US, I'm guessing).

Don't confuse this with local censorship.

> No, the website specifically refuses to provide the content to a range of IP addresses

yes, just like any other website that blocks certain regions and countries.

Ok, in that case I misunderstood your point. I do not understand how "the politicians of the day of some regions (china, australia, european union etc) decided that the freely available internet does not really fit with their worldview. as such they created rules that in effect split their internet from others."

As I understand it, the rule (IP-based exclusion) was created by the website owner, not "the politicians of the day of some regions".

The rule is created by the website owner to avoid getting sued into oblivion by not following GDPR (written by politicians), which it shouldn't really have to, because this is a local news affiliate for a city in the United States. I wouldn't exactly call that "local censorship".

Reading accepted instead of posted in your first post seems more fair.

I share your frustration of the walled gardens and seeing HN embracing that is very sad. In the meantime I can’t help but think about that discussion on open source/free licensed that should or should not allow copy to a closed source commune or commercial content.

What would you think of HN links treated as list of links that people can appended, up or down vote?

I agree my PRC argument is flawed for the reason you pointed, thanks.

>It's discrimination and is against the spirit of the Internet.

The Internet was technically a US weapons project, idk what the "spirit" should be there ;)

Here, now it’s available to your region: https://archive.is/H3LNT

"discrimination" oh come on. Information is behind paywalls and geobased. Some articles are written in languages I don't understand. Is it also discrimination if there isn't a human translation to my native language?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_cooling

Also done in Toronto, Canada (started in 1969):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enwave

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Lake_Water_Cooling_System

* https://www.enwave.com/locations.htm

Where does the heat go from this? Just up in the air?

Yup. The entire roof is full of radiators and fans that blow straight up into the night air.

I wish this was an option for home scale, using solar generation to create the ice during the day, for cooling needs at night. I live in the desert, so no shortage of solar energy, but require cooling at night. A Tesla power wall couldn’t fulfill my nighttime cooling needs for a reasonable price, but a huge block of ice, would be a perfect thermal battery.

There are these things called "ice bears". Could they be what you're looking for? See https://inhabitat.com/efficient-ice-battery-provides-247-coo... for one article.

Ice Bear went out of business years ago. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/thermal-storage...

They tried... and failed... to make this a successful business. Maybe in a few years when people become aware of the technological possibilities. Turns out a 500 gallon vat of water can store a lot of cooling / energy, and its not so expensive to make either.

-------

The name and technology has been sold. Maybe they'll reappear in a few years?

Hook up a chest freezer (or multiple) to solar, then use radiant tubing to distribute the cold water at night.

Or better yet, superinsulate your house, cool your entire house with solar during the day and it should stay cool enough overnight.

And in winter time, put liquid water in that freezer, when it freezes, dump the ice outside, repeat.

With enough milk jugs and a long enough time period, you won’t even have much of a water bill.

The neighbours might complain about your “unsightly” pile of water jugs, but you’re saving the world while they’re destroying it.

You could look at the IcyBalls, heat goes on one side and cooling is on the other side. I guess you could point a Fresnel lens at the hot side and eliminate any need for electricity?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icyball

That is gas absorption cooling. Will work with the sun on, but then, why not stick to solar panels.

No abundant well water for evaporative cooling?

As someone who grew up with evap cooling in the desert - it's effectiveness really falls off quickly > 90 degrees f or so. I have no citations, this is just my experience, but 95+ degree days I was dropping bags of ice into the evap coolers basin and spraying it with (cool) well pumped water to help cool down the air as it came into the home.

So, while maybe you could continuously cycle cool water into it, most places where it's getting that hot don't have abundant supplies of fresh cool water. In my experience.

I think it just greatly depends on the implementation, your unit may have been undersized?

Out by my place near Joshua Tree National Park most the homes and establishments use evap coolers. On the extremely hot days I'll usually go to the public library in town that has an appropriately sized modern evaporative system cooling the entire facility. It seems like no matter how hot it gets outside, it's cold in the library. The staff wear long sleeves or even jackets in the peak of summer, it's kind of funny juxtaposed against 115F outdoor temps.

They just don't work when humid, we don't generally have that problem here, not even at night.

We're also lucky to have abundant water underground, however ancient it may be. One could argue it's inappropriate to squander that water on cooling though, I might even agree with that argument. But with all the illegal agriculture going on in the vicinity (massive weed grows) I think cooling is the least of our water wasting problems...

Interesting thought. In a desert it might be an issue, but normally a desert cools down at night a lot, if not then is that because of the humidity? If there is a high humidity, then evap will fall short.

There are air to water heatpumps. Usually for heating, but many also support cooling. And water can be buffered, that's common practice with heatpump heating anyway.

Perhaps also use a buffering style deployment like floor heating, then you active the thermal mass of the building.

So, I should be possible to solve this with off the shelve components, if you want to go beyond the traditional air to air airconditioners.

It seems like a lot of energy could be saved by, instead of building tall skyscrapers that need cooling, building deep tower-like structures underground. If these "silos" are over 100 stories deep, they would naturally be cool, just like caves are.

One of the reason some people choose to chill in caves. Probably not their primary habitat but surely a nice cool place when temperatures goes far high or low.

40000 years later, I go in my basement on summer peak hours (nap, working on my laptop, reading…) It’s not cosy but I’m feeling very lucky to have this free and always available 18C room.

Or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

Will be interesting to see if electric car charging at night screws up their current economic model.

Good point.

It also makes me think of solar, which isn't going to be available at night.

But also, that area has some of the worst solar availability in the US, so that's less of a concern than it could be. https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm

This is right down the road, so maybe wind has more potential in the area?

https://www.nrel.gov/gis/wind-resource-maps.html is the corresponding map resources for wind.

I was expecting this was going to be a great point & be exceedingly promising, but the maps there show acceptable but not great wind density. As we get closer to appalacia the wind speeds really pick up.

Im also surprised to see even lower wind density in Kansas, which I think of as a state overrun with wind-farms. The availability of land surely factors in, but gee, there just looks like there's so much more wind on the east coast & the south.

WV has a few farms, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Storm_Wind_Farm is the largest I have seen (super scenic area-- WV is beautiful and has lots of interesting history). It is located next to a sizable coal fired plant.

Unfortunately other states in the area (like KY) are openly hostile towards renewables-- virtually 0 wind and limited solar installations.

What about Iowa? There seem to be lots of turbines near highways-- more so than the Indiana farms.

May, June, July and August maps look pretty dope for Chicago though. We need self-erecting containerized PV plants that we can move around with the seasons.

Chicago has great rail connections!

Even more interesting if electric cars can act as peaker plants during the day. Both of these models come down to efficiency I suppose.

Even if the electricity price converges to the mean, it’s easier to “create cold”/reject heat at night when it’s not as warm out (and sometimes get some good radiative heat loss to the universe).

> This content is not available in your country/region.

Is this still a thing? The absolute state of the internet…

"as climate change impacts our weather"

Global warming. Say it. Stop pussyfooting around it.

Maybe it is me, but superficially I find "temperature rises with 1.5 degrees" sounds less scary than "past observations of weather 'i.e. climate' have lost their predictive value. We have no clue how cold/hot/wet/dry it will get here but it will be different than what this place is designed for so you're f*d either way"

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