Human heat is a pretty powerful thing. Aside from curing hypothermia and keeping energy bills low in households that cuddle for warmth, it can be used to heat buildings.
In Stockholm Central Station, over 250,000 commuters pass through the station each day, making it the busiest train station in northern Europe. And 250,000 bodies can generate a lot of heat.
The way is works is excess heat in the station can be extracted through heat exchangers in a ventilation system. This ventilation system can also provide air conditioning. The excess heat in the ventilators gets converted into hot water.
Then, if that already wasn’t enough, the water gets pumped to the building close to the train station to serve as a part of its heat supply. The office blocks save up to 25 percent on energy bills from the human heat provided by the commuters. Cool, eh?
Thinking more about human heat? Check out this Huddle.
(Spotted on BBC)
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
