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The World's Largest Alternative Energy Project is Air-Conditioning?


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somehow this reminded me something I read in grade school back in the 60's.

3M had this idea of building future highrise office buildings into the earth, like 50-80 stories DOWN, they thought it wouldn't need heat or air conditioning.

. . .just one of the ideas from the idea people that never really made it, except for the military ~ we have one going down 80 stories here at McChord Air Base ~ in case of a Nuke attack!!

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I like the idea.Kind of geothermal in reverse.I don't know just how efficient the 50 stories down office buildings would be but heating & cooling should be more efficient.With fiber optis day time lighting could be efficient.It would be pretty strange to drive to the new efficient city with the largest population & it looked like a big park because all buildings are underground.

btw Carlsbad Cavern in NM is a constant 55 degrees F. year round.

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That is a little cool for me too.You have to go down in the cavern a ways before it is the constant temperture .I think the depth at the elevator & lunch room area is 700 ft below ground level.It feels good in the summer when the outside temp is above 100 F.I really like Carlsbad Caverns.I even went on one of their special tours.

If you ever decide to go on one of the special tours book it about 3 months in advance. The one I went on allows only 8 people & 2 park rangers.They only have one a week so that's only

416 people a year that can go on this tour.This is the white giant tour.

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Sounds like they are planning to use that cold water as the liquid in a chilled water system.

BTW -  Old Salt mines are being used for storage / office space

My Central Air / Heat is a water source system. Am using 70 degree water from a flow well instead of using air to air. to extract heat from condenser in A /C mode and to provide heat to condenser when in heating mode.

Rock City at Chattanooga, TN.  Ruby Falls ( I think ) is a good example of lowered temps. underground.

Luray (sp?) Caverns in Virginia is another example.

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. . .yeah, Carlsbad Caverns is one of the Top places to see in the US (been there 3 times). It goes 80 stories down, what's really neat is watching the bats leave ~ it takes like an hour as millions swirl (like a tornado) out of the cavern!

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for cooling that is an interesting deal. like here in PR where it's hot year round being able to boost the efficiency of an AC by using cooled water instead of ambient air for heat dissipation would be good. another interesting app would be to use it to cool the 'cold' side of a solar stirling motor. they have prototypes in the 5KW range that are basically a parabolic mirror of i think 20' or so with a stirling motor sitting in the focal point. i'm sure that could produce more power if the 'cold' side of it were liquid cooled like that. (since more temperature diff on the sterling means it runs with more power.

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EWO;Old salt mines either are or are planned to be used as nuclear waste storage too.

The Tabasco Sauce company mines their own saly & I think they use the ols salt mines their for their aging process too.I haven't been to Luray  Caverns their are actually quite a few  caverns to see in the USA.I haven't been to ny even close to Carlsbad in size.One "Cave of the Winds " in Colorado was disapointing.They stopped the reason it was called cave of the winds.It was some hole that caused it they blocked it off because it annoyed the employees .I guess to hell with the tourists that pay to get in.I've only been the one time so it cost them my business.

ROM-DOS ;I guess I've lost count on how many times I've went to Carlsbad.It's only 350 miles or so from Amarillo.The first time I went it was a dollar a carload.Now I think it's $8.00 per person.The last time was when I took the special tour that was around $40.00 so I didn't pay attention if the regular admission had gone up.Like everything else they charge you to see some things that were part of the regular admission the first 3 or 4 times I went. & there are 2 more special tours I haven't done yet but will if possible.

resopalrabotnick;I haven't heard of a sterling motor.It sounds like it generates electricity.Would that be correct?I saw a simular use of a parabolic mirror to heat water for home use.It also had an electric motor & sensor so it self tracked the sun for more efficiency.I bet the sterling motor could be added to the same device & get two for one.This was it could generate its own electricity for the tracking motor.

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agh. sorry, stirling. it's an external combustion engine, so to speak. it has two cylinders that are interconnected, with the pistons being offset 90 degrees on the crank. there's some interesting links on them if you search for them. from toys to full scale and experimental systems. including an oil or gas fired unit that puts 20 percent of the energy from the fuel into electricity and 60 percent of the energy into heating water.

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VanBuren ;I'm not sure I could even hit hot ground water here.

its not hot, around 5-10 degrees C. The heatpump using a heatexchanger ( evaporator ) that ground water flows in. The heatpump cool the groundwater from eg +5C to +2C, That way the heatpump pick up the heat from ground. In summer you can run it reversed, just letting the fancoils inside the house pick up the heat and drop it in the ground.

check these system solutions

http://www.iceenergy.co.uk/cooling.asp

http://www.iceenergy.co.uk/ground.asp

http://www.iceenergy.co.uk/water.asp

http://www.iceenergy.co.uk/bedrock.asp

VanBuren :)

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if you went too far you might get a problem with lower oxygenation. (the warmer the water the less oxygen it can hold) but bodies of water are amazingly efficient radiators by evaporating water, so any heat fed into it that goes beyond what it would naturally heat up to should dissipate. take into account that heating water takes a lot of energy, so it would take a lot of heat to change the temperature noticably. if the lake is big enough it should be ok.

McLaren (the racing org) has a building for their F1 team that has a moderate sized lake in front. they use that for cooling. the heated water then goes back into the lake via an artificial waterfall/rapids type thingy where a lot of the introduced heat is already reduced through evaporation.

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