Photo Courtesy @ Chris.King
Paris metro is hot – literally. The only ones using this possible advantage were homeless people, sleeping in warm. Though the environmental awerness is no new concept, it’s only recently that the waste energy has been considered as a legitimate source. After piezo-electric phenomenon and kinetic energy of moving trains, heat produced by commuters has come into fashion.
Homeless sleeping in train tunnel / Photo Courtesy @Annie Mole
Commuters / Photo Courtesy @mayur tikekar
Paris Habitat, the largest owner of social housing in Paris, has finally decided to benefit from the fact that Paris Metro is always sultry warm. Six million people is riding metro a day and each person is giving away 100 watts of heat. Combined waste hot air from commuters and moving trains is sufficient to keep temperature in Rambuteau Métro station constantly between 14 and 20°C. Paris Habitat is using dissipated heat to warm up low-income apartments in a housing block in rue Beaubourg, near Centre George Pompidou in Marais.
In Paris Habitat they are expecting significant cuts in heating costs and carbon dioxide emissions, even by third, compared to using a boiler room connected to district heating. Project is highly feasible – existence of the old stairwell connecting the apartment block to the subway eliminates the need for excavation to run the pipes into the metro tunnel. Water is later pumped to the surface into an under-floor heating system in the block of flats.
This brilliant concept introduces huge source of free, zero-carbon energy.
Paris is not the first example of harvested commuters’ heat – in Stockholm they did it the year before, heating up the office block. The only difference is that Swedish initiative was prohibitively expensive – buildings were not directly connected.
So, why not harness the energy of the human body in order to heat a building?
architectureandliving 