This part really caught my attention:
> in 1962, the anthracite seam under Centralia, PA – 25 miles to the west of Lehigh County – caught on fire and is still burning today.)
That’s crazy to think that for over 60 years there’s been an underground coal mine on fire. I wonder how long the mines will burn for. The pictures on Google are quite interesting.
Even Seattle has one of these! And the University of Washington as well. It’s amazing that the economics holds up even today.
An incredibly interesting piece. I live in NY, but didn't know the history.
This did make me chuckle
> reduces your lifespan by about 18 minutes
As George Carlin said, "yeah, but it's the last 18 minutes".
> Traditional fireplaces are immensely inefficient, drawing in 300 cubic feet of air per minute for combustion and expelling up to 85 percent – along with the heat – up the chimney.
So the other 45 cubic feet exhaust per minute go where? Into the rooms to suffocate the people there?
How common are district heating systems? Montpelier in Vermont uses wood stoves to deliver steam to a large part of their small downtown: https://www.montpelier-vt.org/427/Project-Background
My favorite fact about steam distribution systems is that they can be used for cooling, using either a steam-powered compressor or using adsorption refrigeration.
At least the former seems to actually have been employed or at least studied as an option by ConEd in NYC: https://web.archive.org/web/20071008014254/http://www.coned....
Related: "The Lost Art of Steam Heating" by Dan Holohan (2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512 (2018)
Holohan argues that we've mostly lost competence at maintaining steam heating systems, and it's not that hard. The lack of understanding has led to many expensive and ineffective refurbishments.
I always thought watching films that steam in the dark streets was some cool 80s aesthetics. As in 'You are in this dark corner of the city where nobody can hear you' scary or edgy.
"A recent study found that a fireplace pumps out 58 milligrams of particles under 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5s) per kilogram of firewood burnt. This means that every hour you spend in a room with a fireplace burning wood reduces your lifespan by about 18 minutes, equivalent to smoking 1.5 cigarettes"
These kinds of stats really irritate me. Sure, smoking isn't great. Breathing in small particulates also isn't great. However, the 18 minutes is such a weird thing. There are so many people that have lived longer lives by smoking than people that work out all the time. There's just no real evidence this stat is true. You can't clone a person and sit one clone in the room with a fireplace, and then the other not in the room. Then watch which one dies first.
The only test I've seen with evidence of one doing something the other doesn't was the twin brother astronauts where one went to space and the other did not.
Growing up in Southern California and New Mexico, the first exposure I had to systems like this was in Cities Skylines. It boggled my mind that this type of thing was still used enough to feature in a modern simulator game until I started researching them and found them to be a great solution. Very interesting article.
This is one of the coolest articles I’ve come across on HN ever. Also - it’s true steam punk (sorry).
Today's ConEd seems to lag environmentally on the generation side: still runs on fossil fuels, and only half of the steam is by cogeneration of heat and power. (Going by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system)
Indianapolis also has a large steam network, with a prominent steam plant located in the southwest corner of downtown proper -- just down the street from Lucas Oil Stadium.
There's an interesting lecture about the New York city steam heating system by Dan Holohan at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nkgM0qCy5o4
How is mildew and mold avoided in the pipeline and interior spaces being heated by steam?
TIL that steam distribution was invented in the USA around 1880, and is still used in NYC. Never occurred to me that “Steam Plants” literally produce steam for distribution. I thought that was a glib reference to the white smoke they produce!
One of my three favorite books growing up is relevant to this article. It’s also a great allegory about the passage of time and technology. Maybe worth picking up a copy…I still own mine:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mulligan_and_His_Steam_...
Marsh Island, Maine as well:
Fun fact: it's not just small grids that run on steam - Munich's steam heating dates back to 1908 and since 2022 it's being reworked at massive expense to hot water to better accommodate geothermal and other renewable forms of heatpump based generation because these sources cannot get hot enough to produce supercritical steam [1].
[1] https://www.swm.de/dam/doc/geschaeftskunden/fernwaerme/flyer...
The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was built between 1973 and 1984 by the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) at a cost of approximately $6 billion. It was never put into use and was fully torn down in 1994. It stands as one of the most expensive industrial projects ever completed but never used for its intended purpose.
> The last total system failure was in 2007, when an 82-year-old pipe at 41st and Lexington exploded, showering Midtown in debris. Heavy rainfall had cooled the pipes, producing large amounts of condensate quickly, and a clogged steam trap meant that the system was unable to expel the water. When this build-up hit a critical level, the internal pressure shot up, causing the explosion. Almost fifty people were injured, and one woman died of a heart attack while fleeing
The photo of this explosion makes it look huge. I wonder how much the pent up infrastructure work to avoid these issues would cost. Are water or gas pipes also vulnerable to this sort of thing?
Pratt university in Brooklyn used to have a gentleman working there named Conrad Milster. He is a steam head and machinist who maintaining Pratts secret "working museum", a turn of the century steam generating plant for the campus. The plant also features two boilers, the original boiler which originally provided both heat and power and an additional boiler was added in the 30's to add capacity as the campus expanded. Milster also lived on campus in the old row houses. His was special, a full set of gauges and meters in his living room was plumbed to the plant so he could keep an eye on the boilers from he comfort of his home. He also said that steam from the plant not only heated the campus but a few buildings off campus that surrounded it. I never got to ask which buildings though. So there very well might be a little steam network in Brooklyn around Pratt.
This is located in the basement of one of the buildings on campus. The power plant consists of three Ames Iron works single piston steam generators producing 120V DC fed to a marble switch board. Another piece is an early non-functioning steam turbine DC generator, WW2 era diesel generator from a battle ship. A 30HP motor-generator set used to provide 120V DC to the two service elevators in the building. And in the boiler room are numerous antique yet still functioning feed water pumps (the original steam driven feed water pumps actually do most of the work with newer electric pumps kept for standby) On the wall of the boiler room is a functional steam driven Ingersoll Rand air compressor. Amazing place. When I first visited in the 90's the MG set was still running providing power to the service elevators though they were replaced in the 00's leaving the MG set idle. There is also an old giant wood and brass Master clock in the office that was wired to every other clock on campus so whatever time you set on the master, the other clocks would then run super fact until they come around to the set time. It was running up to the 80's I think but Milster said a renovation crew hacked up all the wiring and no one ever bothered to fix it.
Milster was fired a few years ago supposedly after he refused to remove the resident stray cats who lived in the plant (they even had their own little decorated doorway.) The reason being a union employee was allergic to the cats and kept complaining until they fired him. Shame because anyone who works with antique steam equipment knows Milster and hes full of ancient knowledge no one will ever regain.
Edit: If you are into steam then look up Conrad Milster. I had the pleasure of talking to him a few times and he's such a nice and knowledgeable individual. He even started one of the 120V generators just for me after I said "Wish I could see it run" and he was like "sure" then opens a valve and slowly opens another to get it up to speed. Scary as the inertial lever arm bangs around loudly in the flywheel but then its goes near silent and hums away. Steam engines are very quiet.
The temperature of this is such that industrial heat pumps are available to produce the steam. I don't imagine these are used in NY City, but they could be.
Saas - Steam as a service
The article cites end-to-end efficiency as 60%. Plus the costs of maintaining steam generators and the pipe network.
Electrical transmission systems are roughly 85% efficient to the consumer; together with boring old resistive electric radiators which are 100% efficient. So is there any reason to subscribe to the steam system for new construction?