Serious doubts this harvests more energy than it wasted in materials
Would the materials have much more of a footprint than geothermal installations? Because that slight 7° difference between below ground temp and above ground temps apparently justifies the labor, materials, and power to the circulators for harvesting geothermal energy. So this seems to be the same but adding a cherry on top – incorporating a heat pump to add to the energy of a geothermal system.
Would be a matter of scale. Geothermal has essentially infinite thermal mass, whereas this has a very limited amount of heat produced by bodies.
I’d like to know more details on what they’re storing the heat in, and how the heat exchanger works. Seems like a neat idea though.
The heat is probably stored in water by using a simple counter flow heat exchanger. So at night they are using the ‘cool’ ground water for cooling and during the day, they are using the ‘warm’ ground water for heating, probably involving a heat pump.
Because of Google’s DoS attack, those of us in the open free world cannot reach Youtube. So would someone please explain the concept in text?
Is this it? → https://utahforge.com/2022/12/30/did-you-know-that-scottish-clubbers-use-dance-beat-to-generate-heat/
Seems like a great idea. Like using the body heat to boost geothermals.
Someone plz tell Massive Attack about this. Massive Attack has gone gung-ho on eco-friendly festivals (in places inaccessible by car). They might want to throw some indoor events with this tech.
(edit) from the article:
“An experienced DJ could get up to 600 watts with the right song at the right time.”
So IIUC that’s like ~1½ solar panels getting a full dose of UV, correct? I guess that’s not much. But nonetheless not something to throw away either. So during the day solar panels on the roof could heat the ground pipes and during the night the clubbers keep the system powered.
Would be fun for that power output to be measured, and then that power measurement could be a performance index on each DJ. You pay the DJ according to the power output they can produce. Though I guess that would screw over the ambiant / trip-hop DJs.
