I don't put it to intellect, but just as worrying is the lack of curiosity. You live around these pillars with steam pouring out and you don't think "I wonder what's happening there" and look it up, we have the sum of all human knowledge at our finger tips but many of us lack the curiosity to use it.
Manhattan runs on all three, Steam, Nat. Gas and Electricity. From the tip to 104th street, with one exception being Bloomingdale on 105th. If it is a building over 10 stories tall and 50 years old it has steam or has had steam previously. The older and bigger the building it might even have air conditioning powered by steam.
I retired from a large Philly hospital / research centers that had six boilers on the sixth floor of one building and another six in a mid level basement between two buildings supplying steam. In an emergency they would call up the steam company to purchase steam. They charged $1,500 15 years ago every time we opened thier valve plus the cost for the steam. Hospital made a ton of money every summer by signing up for peak electrical peak shaving during hot summer days. They would bring on more boilers on line and run the steam chillers to provide air conditioning and turning off electric driven chillers. Every day they shaved 3 million kilowatt hours every hour for only six hours they earned over $15K. Of course cheap facilities director & chief electrician cried when they had to pay two electrician usually only two hours of over time.
Hi Garbo - I do a lot of Philly work and totally agree that Load Shedding/Peak Shaving can be a Win/Win strategy and a great way to offset capital costs to pay forward energy efficiency, safety and sustainability!
That walk-through tour of the building's steam pipe is great. I work as a commercial service plumber in Manhattan and I see these rooms basically every day. What they don't mention though is that basically anything in plumbing wears out or requires maintenance. Some condensate tanks in buildings also require chemicals to be injected into condensate so they won't corrode the tanks and piping and they have to dump the steam / condensate into the streets from time to time.
Why steam and not pressurised water like in Europe? Nothing needs to be wented to the streets and it turns to steam if there's a leak as the temp is a lot higher than boiling point of water in normal pressure.
@@oskar6747 The steam systems in USA are much older than the European water based systems. The cost to rebuild them to modern water-based systems is probably as a high as building a totally new system altogether.
Seattle uses steam in the old downtown part of the city. Seattle Steam is down on the waterfront. Steam goes uphill to buildings and the water flows downhill. Washington State University has a steam plant at the bottom of a hill.
I knew steam was used throughout NYC, but I didn't know it was this extensively used, nor did I know just how many purposes it may serve in individual places. This was very informative for me.
It was in the background not distracting for me. The genres are reflective of the new York urban culture and the other stuff is meant to eventuate the revelational insight. I think it was chosen well :o voices higher volume than music too. It would be cool if UA-cam had a button to remove background music though haha
You sure helped the situation here, by also talking out of your rancid brown eye and not offering any talking points as to why they’re wrong and somehow your lack of information is correct. Go play in traffic.
200 buildings in Downtown Vancouver, BC are heated by a central boiler and pipe system, with no steam stacks... but an outdoor grandfather clock with steam powered whistles.
Well done video. I've always known some buildings run on steam, but I thought only the older buildings like the Empire State and the Chrysler building used it. But it is used throughout Manhattan I now know. Thanks.
It's also important to note that the vents are not releasing steam - it's actually called Condensate which forms when steam is cooled by an instantaneous reaction when introduced to the atmosphere. That temperature is significantly lower than the distribution steam. It's critical to maintain a safe, efficiency operating system inside and outside, so the use of reusable insulation blankets keeping the steam temperature in the piping as hot as possible increases energy efficiency, safety per OSHA standards and sustainability/CO2 reduction. There are also NYC laws in place to enforce these attributes which are good for the environment used by countless Healthcare, Higher Education, Municipal and Hospitality customers in Manhattan in safe and effective ways.
Doing any construction in Manhattan must be so difficult. If you bust a water pipe things get wet but bursting a high-pressure steam pipe?!? It'd be like a bomb going off
Many of Seattle's buildings are steam heated, also, including my apartment building. It's very efficient in winter....almost too much so, in fact. I always have difficulty in turning it off in my apartment once the weather warms up. A lot of people think the heat is supplied by live steam entering their apartments. The steam is kept bottled up and only heats the metal heating element inside each heater, which is located at each window. I'm not surprised about NYC's young people's ignorance of all this. They've been robbed of a real education for over fifty years, like everyone else. They don't even understand what steam is! LOL
What’s really cool is the fact that they can use the waste heat (ie. exhaust gases) from electricity production and utilize an otherwise wasted resource. Going more in depth, you can transfer 100% of mechanical energy into heat, but the same cannot be said the other way around. Cars are only about 30% efficient at transforming the heat energy from gasoline into mechanical work. High efficiency power plants are about 60% efficient. Parasitic losses like friction aren’t the main culprit, it’s more to do with the theoretical efficiencies of heat engines. For heat engines to work, you need a hot side and a cold side (ie. hot exhaust gasses, cold environment for them to expand into). If the temperature difference between the two is high, more of the energy flowing from the hot side to the cold side will get turned into useful work, as opposed to just going out the cold side. (A car engine uses the hot exhaust gases to push against a piston thus expanding the gases and cooling them down. Ideally the gases would expand enough to cool them to ambient, but that’s not possible in a car and so heat is lost out the exhaust pipe.) All this is to say, every time you are turning heat into electricity, there is always going to be heat that is expelled that cannot be used to generate electricity. The brilliance of this is that they are making use of an otherwise wasted resource. You may not be able to generate electricity off of the waste heat, but you can use the waste heat to heat your home.
The energy waste is an American problem primarily. In Europe the steam is used for heating of houses and hot water. The energy efficiency is close to 98%. In fact many factories having a production who produces heat will be reusing that heat. Taxes on fuel is in general so high not reusing energy one way or the other - the production wouldn't be economical viable. Why we don't waste energy or uses vehicle with fuel in efficient motors. Whether you like it or not - there's a stick and carrot method to be more effective in using fuels and electricity. The economic incentives are too big not to be a part of it. Even being very wealthy you'll probably try to be energy efficient - you could be losing your business and wealth in not doing so. You might not even care or disagree of it being necessary. The economical incentives are too big to ignore. Supply and demand are both very much at work. It's like cigarettes and booze it's not healthy for you - taxes keeps the demand lower by making them expensive. Taxes are the most effective tools to regulate human behavior in a desired direction. In the US taxes could decide who gets to be the next president - the candidate promising the biggest tax exemptions for the wealthy is more likely to be elected. Giving tax exemptions to companies using outdated equipment to continue or start an otherwise economical unviable production is just making sure wages are kept low and prevents a middle class being sustained or created - the class where a lot of the educated people traditionally originates from. Because they can afford their children going to highschool and higher education. One reason for on one hand having some of the best universities and on the other hand being very dependent on importing educated people.
If you are still confused, steam is delivered to each house like water. Basically its like delivering hot water from a single water source that do the heating for you instead of having your own heater. Its way cheaper than using electricity for your heater, remember its NYC.
Steam becomes such an everyday part of life in Manhattan you don't even think about when you live there, except for maybe the steam heat you get in the winter when your building's boiler goes out.
It seems weird for me that steam is used. In my home country we use water that is almost at boiling point for the distribution of heat. Steam is only used on industrial sites. What an interesting system 😮
Should have pointed out how must energy is wasted in the winter! Half Manhattan leave their windows open because their steam powered radiators thermostats are busted and run so hot the apartments become saunas.
I think the video skipped a lot over the cogeneration aspect of these plants. Does the exhaust steam from the turbines get sent out? Or do they divert the steam before it goes to the turbine? How many watts does the steam turbine generate?
The turbines in the diagram are gas turbines. It shows a combustor , compressor and turbine , this is a jet engine. A steam turbine consists of only a turbine. The cogenerator uses a heat exchanger in the exhaust of the gas turbine to harvest waste heat .
There is something called central heating with what we call Blockheizkraftwerk (BHKW) in Germany. You use gas to produce heat. Send that heat into homes (Fernwärme) and while it's producing heat it generates electricity.
But that is a closed system where the cooled steam returns back to the plant. Here they are ultimately venting all the steam out and need to constantly supply fresh water into the system
next video on absorption chillers, it was sorta mentioned but it would be cool for people to learn about or even knows it exists. lots of places can’t have mechanical chillers because the power grid can’t take that load. some of the diagrams were very simplified and dumbed down however it got the concept across without being lengthy.
For those who don’t understand how water availability works, NYC has all the water it needs. There is no reason to not use it. It is not like the Western US where water usage needs to be limited at all times. And don’t even think trucking water West is a good idea. Think about it.
This is what I'm trying to say in Helsinki Finland too. I refuse to use any annoying water saving devices. Ffs, we have so much clean drinking water that we can afford to make artificial lakes for swimming with it and my local parks have built-in sprinklers turning on every morning and the tunnel that supplies us with water has maybe 33% of its capacity in use, so there is absolutely zero need to save water here. It won't magically teleport to California or Africa.
@oskar6747 Well, maybe you wont experience lack of water in your life but further generations might be struggling with it so dont be selfish and don't use more water than you really need.
@@farariri My water usage won't affect any future generations. It's not selfish, we have never after päijännetunneli was dug had any water shortages here. And I just moved to an island and can swim and drive boat in my washing water. Drinking water I have to carry from the mainland, but it comes from the same lake.
So if the water used is drinking water already, that’s then filtered further… what’s w the “smell” that accompanies the steam emitted from the steam hats around the city?
I just have to wonder: how much does all the steam released into the air raise the humidity in the area? Does that increase the discomfort in the summer and the amount of snowfall in the winter?
When the system is working optimally, it's possible that no steam is released, since it condenses to water when all the heat is extracted from it. But I don't know if all the applications for this steam actually extract all the heat that's in it.
My grandfather was a boiler cleaner, but I have never seen a boiler in my life. I always thought boilers were ancient tech, replaced by more modern options long before I was born. It's strange to hear these people talking about needing a boiler in a building if steam was no longer available.
Boilers are still very much around in industrial or large-scale settings. Most manufacturing plants have at least some steam, and all fuel-based power plants run off steam too. Nuclear, coal, gas, etc are used to boil water into steam to pass it through a turbine, which spins a generator and makes electricity. Then that steam is cooled back into water, and pushed back into the boilers.
Decades ago I had a summer job in a textile plant, doing the yearly clean up & refit. They had two boilers to power the plant and I had to climb through an inspection hatch to clean the inside of them. I came out dirtier than a coal miner.
@@flyingcrab36 A water heater. A cylinder in my garage that burns gas to heat the water directly. No steam is ever involved. In every house I've lived in, in 3 different states, that's how it works. No boilers.
@@flyingcrab36 Boilers borrow a steam pipe from the street and wrap some water pipes around it to steal the heat. The steam is so hot it boils the water. This boiling water can be used to heat the building, or it can be used to heat some fresh water to wash your hands etc. A Water Heater has to make its own heat all by itself.
With as much snow as NY gets, I'm surprised they havent figured out a way to use it to heat the streets and sidewalks. That would basically get rid of a HUGE bill every year... It could be done with the steam after it heated the buildings. Instead of just venting it like they do.
So by delivering steam to customer, customer can turn it to electricity, water and hot at the same time interchangeably. In other place, they just deliver gas for boiler for heating, electricity for cooling and water independently. which one is better? I really want to know.
Those vent pipes release the money into the air. Urban steam reticulation is a pretty efficient energy transport system if it's maintained diligently. New York is getting old. It's been neglected.
The typical response I get when I tell people that steam is still used as a utility in the same vein as electricity in NYC and elsewhere is incredulity, they simply do not believe me. To so many people steam is just too archaic to be useful. To others its usefulness (in a commercial sense) lies in the generation of electricity and basically nowhere else. edit: I'm not in a city that uses steam like this, but I'm only around 5 hours driving from both Boston and NYC, so it isn't like it isn't used in this region. Yet people here just do not learn about it. I only initially learned about it from being a history nerd.
This is cute. It doesn't actually point out that it's natural gas burning to heat all that steam. Doesn't even show you what a boiler is until 9 minutes in. Doesn't point out the carbon footprint if we're measuring what science says is environmentally friendly, just claims it's efficient. Yeah, compared to wood stoves. Idiocity, not Curiosity.
It solves all the problems of expanding cities with this newfangled technology... 150 years ago. So that's it, then. This is the sort of technology we should find the remains of in archaeological digs.
This is such a perfect use case for a boiling water nuclear reactor. The infrastructure is already there just pull out the gas turbine and drop in a reactor as a green source of steam. Completely decarbonize without changing the existing steam infrastructure
@@BrianStroud-d3p alot simpler than replacing all the infrastructure with something else. Its only as difficult as putting in a new gas plant. GE is actually working on district heating projects in europe using a SMR BWR just like I suggested if you want to see an example, lookup the bwrx-300 district heating
@ in an ideal world, we burn no fossil fuels but unfortunately, we do, and nyc has atleast been doing something for decandes to make it significantly less of a long term loose-loose than most utlities in the fuel to electrcity industry
How come hot water is not used but rather steam? I am guessing that the energy needs are so large that hot water could not transport what is needed? I am asking because using hot water with much lower pressure is of course safer.
next to no moving parts as the steam pressure is created by the waters expansion. I assume this is very convenient as opposed to pumping hot water up the tall buildings in New York. More than anything the infrastructure is already there for steam so it’s easier to stick with it for now. New builds are more incentivized to use alternative means for heat but retrofitting an entire building is too expensive to be feasible
Did I miss something, or did they not explain anything about why they use steam instead of water? My city is switching from steam to water for efficiency reasons, so the natural question is why did anyone use steam in the first place? Moreover, how is the energy in the steam actually converted to heat in the individual room? Again, it’s easier to understand that hot water in a radiator heats the radio at or, which then heats the room.
From what watched, I would say that steam distribution was just much simplier back in the day. Just a boiler, a pressure tank and pipes and valves. Very little use of electric pumps ( require more sophisticated tech and regular supply of electricity). Since the infrustructure has been working for decades, there was never any incentive to shift to more modern systeams.
They should find some way to vent the steam without the ugly ass orange stacks blocking parts of the sidewalk, this is supposed to be the richest city in the world after all
15:49 The industries of the industrial revolution were powered by steam engines , not internal combustion engines. The only difference with New York's system is the steam comes from centralised plants , not from a boiler for each site.
The red and white small stacks are releasing what’s called condensation this steam power goes back to Victorian times The taller stack based on the colour of the smoke coming out of it getting close to black smoke may be an indication to a combination of plastic or rubber and maybe coal. You could also use steam to power a generator/ dc 3 phase to make electricity. In addition there are other ways to make electricity using other methods which I’m not going to go into as it’s currently being developed. All I will say is it doesn’t involve nuclear. hydro. Wind. Sea currents. Tidal. Or solar.
I like steam I like that heat and electrical system is 2 different things so if the electrical grid ever went out we would still have nice clean steam for heat all about diversity I think it’s kinda an untapped piece infrastructure I use a steam cleaner in my home
Your boilers need electricity to run, even steam. No electricity your zone valves and thermostats won’t work even steam needs electricity. Hydronic(water) or mini split lol all need electricity 24/7
@@BertBuild I’m no expert but pretty sure you still can have stand by power I mean they talked about how they could run their boilers off gas plus buildings can also have stand by generators incase of electrical grid failure it’s a redundant source of heat definitely not full proof in every situation I just wanted to try to come up with some positives seems like a lot of people hate steam in these comments lol
@@dylanmayes9555 yes the boilers do need gas or oil in constant supply and same with electricity. Only way to be redundant even a little bit is to have a generator hooked up
@@dylanmayes9555 steam is actually the best way to heat any space. There is a reason they used it all those years ago and it still is in use today. It’s cheap to maintain and water holds temperature better than almost any element on the periodic table. Thus making steam the best and most efficient way to transfer heat. New houses today use HVAC which is just blowing around air. Air does not conduct or retain its temperature even close to the same rate water and steam do
@@dylanmayes9555 I’m 10 years into plumbing haha been in my family since the 1970’s steam is epic lots of places around the world band it completely in the mid 1900’s because no one knew how to pipe systems right and they would explode is not done correctly. Europe is all hydronic not steam so it’s heating water and forcing that warm water around pipes in closed loops where as a steam boiler is literally taking a constant supply of water and turning it into steam much more dangerous but in USA we have strict codes and people like steam
I have a gas-fired hot-water heating system. Quiet and draftless. Converted from oil to gas in 2016 after a lot of regulatory BS relating to location of my oil tank.
They are called radiators, which are coiled metal pipe attached to a steampipe near the baseboards, sometimes they are mounted under the floors, which can be nice keeping the floors warm in winter and the incoming coldwater pipes from freezing through winter. They also continue to work when the electric grid goes down. They are more economical and renewable than central HVac heaters running off electricity.
I would have preferred to see the actual numbers for cost over time comparisons against the many other solutions for HVAC and electric. Are these steam buildings single point of failures or can one back the other? Where was steam generated electricity when New York City has had three major blackouts, neither of which were forecast or expected. The first was in 1965, the second in 1977, and the latest in 2003. The 2003 was caused by a “software bug” in an installation near Akron. It is a reminder that energy consumption is not the only threat to an aged grid. It seems no one wants to look to far down the road since they will not get credit for something done now to make better in the future. The real driver for all is money and if CONED can just keep saying how great they are and everyone believes or trusts but does not verify then we are headed for problems.
@@CreachterZ It is still a lot of energy left in that water when going down the drain. Recirculating it back to the boiler would save a lot energy. But changing that infrastructure would be costly and complicated, so understand why it has not been done.
Everywhere on Manhattan next to a building is in the middle of the road. The follow-up question is; what is the value of that area in the middle of the road on Manhattan and what are they paying for it?
It's not at all known for that.... Idk who told y'all that bold faced lie lmaooo maybe if you're a customer of con Edison who gets their steam to your home your drinking water is decent at best... otherwise the trash filled water resources in NYC is the safest tap...yeah right
This one really shows the intellectual divide between people who learn about their environment and people who do not.
It’s called going about my day because there’s more important things to worry about
Either does not exclude the other :)
Tips federa
I don't put it to intellect, but just as worrying is the lack of curiosity. You live around these pillars with steam pouring out and you don't think "I wonder what's happening there" and look it up, we have the sum of all human knowledge at our finger tips but many of us lack the curiosity to use it.
You just know which way they vote.
Technically NY runs on GAS that boils the water and turn it into steam
It runs on several sources of heat to create steam. None are very good except nuclear.
of course there's always one guy.....
@@couchpotatoes5158 Who speaks truth? And understands the background? Please tell me what I’m missing.
@@CreachterZ The point is that the steam is being directly delivered to homes. It would be like saying New York runs on electricity.
Manhattan runs on all three, Steam, Nat. Gas and Electricity. From the tip to 104th street, with one exception being Bloomingdale on 105th. If it is a building over 10 stories tall and 50 years old it has steam or has had steam previously. The older and bigger the building it might even have air conditioning powered by steam.
I retired from a large Philly hospital / research centers that had six boilers on the sixth floor of one building and another six in a mid level basement between two buildings supplying steam. In an emergency they would call up the steam company to purchase steam. They charged $1,500 15 years ago every time we opened thier valve plus the cost for the steam. Hospital made a ton of money every summer by signing up for peak electrical peak shaving during hot summer days. They would bring on more boilers on line and run the steam chillers to provide air conditioning and turning off electric driven chillers. Every day they shaved 3 million kilowatt hours every hour for only six hours they earned over $15K. Of course cheap facilities director & chief electrician cried when they had to pay two electrician usually only two hours of over time.
Hi Garbo - I do a lot of Philly work and totally agree that Load Shedding/Peak Shaving can be a Win/Win strategy and a great way to offset capital costs to pay forward energy efficiency, safety and sustainability!
Took a while during this video to reveal the actual source/type of fuel used to actually make the steam, 21:10, methane gas.
That walk-through tour of the building's steam pipe is great. I work as a commercial service plumber in Manhattan and I see these rooms basically every day. What they don't mention though is that basically anything in plumbing wears out or requires maintenance. Some condensate tanks in buildings also require chemicals to be injected into condensate so they won't corrode the tanks and piping and they have to dump the steam / condensate into the streets from time to time.
CAN YOU MAKE A VLOG OF UR DAY IN THE LIFE INSTEAD OF PLAYING GTA SA!( NOT 2004)
Why steam and not pressurised water like in Europe? Nothing needs to be wented to the streets and it turns to steam if there's a leak as the temp is a lot higher than boiling point of water in normal pressure.
@@oskar6747 The steam systems in USA are much older than the European water based systems. The cost to rebuild them to modern water-based systems is probably as a high as building a totally new system altogether.
@@oskar6747 Steam has no weight to it, flows like gas threw the pipes.
Seattle uses steam in the old downtown part of the city. Seattle Steam is down on the waterfront. Steam goes uphill to buildings and the water flows downhill. Washington State University has a steam plant at the bottom of a hill.
seattle #1 in america
University of Idaho does too. The pipes run beneath the sidewalks.
More like Curiosity Steam amirite?
😂😂😂😂
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ get out!
Lol
I knew steam was used throughout NYC, but I didn't know it was this extensively used, nor did I know just how many purposes it may serve in individual places. This was very informative for me.
Why the constant annoying music? I can’t stand it.
Yep, had to stop at 9 minutes because the music was doing my head in.
It was in the background not distracting for me. The genres are reflective of the new York urban culture and the other stuff is meant to eventuate the revelational insight. I think it was chosen well :o voices higher volume than music too. It would be cool if UA-cam had a button to remove background music though haha
I can’t unhear it now
Yup, select, music, free, ultra annoying check
Ego Self Gratification Editing ... Like Pointless "B" Roll Clips ...Thinking I must Be like BrainWashing Tv ... You Tube Creators NEED To Get Over IT!
many people speaking out their asses making derogatory comments about steam heating.
@@ronblack7870 They better recognize.
@@ronblack7870 i like stean heat. You don't get that fried dust stench when the furnaces turn on
You sure helped the situation here, by also talking out of your rancid brown eye and not offering any talking points as to why they’re wrong and somehow your lack of information is correct. Go play in traffic.
200 buildings in Downtown Vancouver, BC are heated by a central boiler and pipe system, with no steam stacks... but an outdoor grandfather clock with steam powered whistles.
Well done video. I've always known some buildings run on steam, but I thought only the older buildings like the Empire State and the Chrysler building used it. But it is used throughout Manhattan I now know. Thanks.
It's also important to note that the vents are not releasing steam - it's actually called Condensate which forms when steam is cooled by an instantaneous reaction when introduced to the atmosphere. That temperature is significantly lower than the distribution steam. It's critical to maintain a safe, efficiency operating system inside and outside, so the use of reusable insulation blankets keeping the steam temperature in the piping as hot as possible increases energy efficiency, safety per OSHA standards and sustainability/CO2 reduction. There are also NYC laws in place to enforce these attributes which are good for the environment used by countless Healthcare, Higher Education, Municipal and Hospitality customers in Manhattan in safe and effective ways.
lived there for four years and never knew this. thanks for sharing this. God Bless You.
Doing any construction in Manhattan must be so difficult. If you bust a water pipe things get wet but bursting a high-pressure steam pipe?!? It'd be like a bomb going off
Many of Seattle's buildings are steam heated, also, including my apartment building. It's very efficient in winter....almost too much so, in fact. I always have difficulty in turning it off in my apartment once the weather warms up. A lot of people think the heat is supplied by live steam entering their apartments. The steam is kept bottled up and only heats the metal heating element inside each heater, which is located at each window. I'm not surprised about NYC's young people's ignorance of all this. They've been robbed of a real education for over fifty years, like everyone else. They don't even understand what steam is! LOL
What’s really cool is the fact that they can use the waste heat (ie. exhaust gases) from electricity production and utilize an otherwise wasted resource.
Going more in depth, you can transfer 100% of mechanical energy into heat, but the same cannot be said the other way around. Cars are only about 30% efficient at transforming the heat energy from gasoline into mechanical work. High efficiency power plants are about 60% efficient. Parasitic losses like friction aren’t the main culprit, it’s more to do with the theoretical efficiencies of heat engines. For heat engines to work, you need a hot side and a cold side (ie. hot exhaust gasses, cold environment for them to expand into). If the temperature difference between the two is high, more of the energy flowing from the hot side to the cold side will get turned into useful work, as opposed to just going out the cold side. (A car engine uses the hot exhaust gases to push against a piston thus expanding the gases and cooling them down. Ideally the gases would expand enough to cool them to ambient, but that’s not possible in a car and so heat is lost out the exhaust pipe.)
All this is to say, every time you are turning heat into electricity, there is always going to be heat that is expelled that cannot be used to generate electricity. The brilliance of this is that they are making use of an otherwise wasted resource. You may not be able to generate electricity off of the waste heat, but you can use the waste heat to heat your home.
The energy waste is an American problem primarily. In Europe the steam is used for heating of houses and hot water. The energy efficiency is close to 98%. In fact many factories having a production who produces heat will be reusing that heat. Taxes on fuel is in general so high not reusing energy one way or the other - the production wouldn't be economical viable. Why we don't waste energy or uses vehicle with fuel in efficient motors. Whether you like it or not - there's a stick and carrot method to be more effective in using fuels and electricity. The economic incentives are too big not to be a part of it. Even being very wealthy you'll probably try to be energy efficient - you could be losing your business and wealth in not doing so. You might not even care or disagree of it being necessary. The economical incentives are too big to ignore. Supply and demand are both very much at work. It's like cigarettes and booze it's not healthy for you - taxes keeps the demand lower by making them expensive. Taxes are the most effective tools to regulate human behavior in a desired direction. In the US taxes could decide who gets to be the next president - the candidate promising the biggest tax exemptions for the wealthy is more likely to be elected. Giving tax exemptions to companies using outdated equipment to continue or start an otherwise economical unviable production is just making sure wages are kept low and prevents a middle class being sustained or created - the class where a lot of the educated people traditionally originates from. Because they can afford their children going to highschool and higher education. One reason for on one hand having some of the best universities and on the other hand being very dependent on importing educated people.
If you are still confused, steam is delivered to each house like water.
Basically its like delivering hot water from a single water source that do the heating for you instead of having your own heater.
Its way cheaper than using electricity for your heater, remember its NYC.
thanks i didnt get how they used steam
i
Steam becomes such an everyday part of life in Manhattan you don't even think about when you live there, except for maybe the steam heat you get in the winter when your building's boiler goes out.
It seems weird for me that steam is used. In my home country we use water that is almost at boiling point for the distribution of heat. Steam is only used on industrial sites. What an interesting system 😮
21:15 - this guy is really trying to convince himself that gas is a sustainable source of energy. 😂
Larry king has an endless supply of gas
I've always wondered why snow melts way faster in Manhattan compared to the boroughs outside of it. This might explain it.
I am thinking of frostpunk while watching this.
Should have pointed out how must energy is wasted in the winter! Half Manhattan leave their windows open because their steam powered radiators thermostats are busted and run so hot the apartments become saunas.
Almost half of NY electricity comes from Hydro-Québec, which is in Canada.
its nice that they are using the leftover lower preshure steam aftter generating electric
I think the video skipped a lot over the cogeneration aspect of these plants. Does the exhaust steam from the turbines get sent out? Or do they divert the steam before it goes to the turbine? How many watts does the steam turbine generate?
The turbines in the diagram are gas turbines. It shows a combustor , compressor and turbine , this is a jet engine. A steam turbine consists of only a turbine.
The cogenerator uses a heat exchanger in the exhaust of the gas turbine to harvest waste heat .
The constant soundtrack is distracting from what is being said--talk about lazy editing. Brutal.
go watch a different video, then
@@mikeandstony things improve when people provide feedback.
There is something called central heating with what we call Blockheizkraftwerk (BHKW) in Germany. You use gas to produce heat. Send that heat into homes (Fernwärme) and while it's producing heat it generates electricity.
But that is a closed system where the cooled steam returns back to the plant. Here they are ultimately venting all the steam out and need to constantly supply fresh water into the system
2:12 average sheople these day… “point a to point b, it don’t effect me!!”
Is that a problem to you?
You gonna shame folks for being all "someone else's problem" on steam pipes? 🤣 You need a beer.
Excellent content guys 👏 👏.
Keep up the good work!!!
glad you dudes can't hoard this content
955 MW equivalent is VERY impressive.
Why not hot water? In Poland we use hot water heating from power plants widely, for millions of citizens... And nothing explodes.
Steam was easier to move around a century ago, so they went with that..
Can you remove the background noise. Too much distracting
next video on absorption chillers, it was sorta mentioned but it would be cool for people to learn about or even knows it exists. lots of places can’t have mechanical chillers because the power grid can’t take that load. some of the diagrams were very simplified and dumbed down however it got the concept across without being lengthy.
Minneapolis runs on High pressure steam as well, while our sister city St Paul runs on high pressure hot water.
For those who don’t understand how water availability works, NYC has all the water it needs. There is no reason to not use it.
It is not like the Western US where water usage needs to be limited at all times. And don’t even think trucking water West is a good idea. Think about it.
This is what I'm trying to say in Helsinki Finland too. I refuse to use any annoying water saving devices. Ffs, we have so much clean drinking water that we can afford to make artificial lakes for swimming with it and my local parks have built-in sprinklers turning on every morning and the tunnel that supplies us with water has maybe 33% of its capacity in use, so there is absolutely zero need to save water here. It won't magically teleport to California or Africa.
@oskar6747 Well, maybe you wont experience lack of water in your life but further generations might be struggling with it so dont be selfish and don't use more water than you really need.
@@farariri My water usage won't affect any future generations. It's not selfish, we have never after päijännetunneli was dug had any water shortages here. And I just moved to an island and can swim and drive boat in my washing water. Drinking water I have to carry from the mainland, but it comes from the same lake.
NYC pulls water from reserviors in southeast NY state doesnt meant its free
In Alberta we use Gas,wood, and if you live near the patch, oil. Also at 6:42 is that Rodney Dangerfield?
wait is the voiceover guy the same one from History Channels How its Made?
So if the water used is drinking water already, that’s then filtered further… what’s w the “smell” that accompanies the steam emitted from the steam hats around the city?
Dude, in the beginning sounds like a relative of Michael Rappaport 😂
The anti electrification theme of steam, is very obvious in this article.
You might need to install a lot of bigger copper wires. That would cost a lot.
So in short: each steam stack represents a fault in the system.
Super interesting!
Do they take back the return condensate from the buildings?
I just have to wonder: how much does all the steam released into the air raise the humidity in the area? Does that increase the discomfort in the summer and the amount of snowfall in the winter?
When the system is working optimally, it's possible that no steam is released, since it condenses to water when all the heat is extracted from it. But I don't know if all the applications for this steam actually extract all the heat that's in it.
Too little to measure. It is next to an ocean.
My grandfather was a boiler cleaner, but I have never seen a boiler in my life. I always thought boilers were ancient tech, replaced by more modern options long before I was born. It's strange to hear these people talking about needing a boiler in a building if steam was no longer available.
Boilers are still very much around in industrial or large-scale settings. Most manufacturing plants have at least some steam, and all fuel-based power plants run off steam too. Nuclear, coal, gas, etc are used to boil water into steam to pass it through a turbine, which spins a generator and makes electricity. Then that steam is cooled back into water, and pushed back into the boilers.
Decades ago I had a summer job in a textile plant, doing the yearly clean up & refit. They had two boilers to power the plant and I had to climb through an inspection hatch to clean the inside of them. I came out dirtier than a coal miner.
How do you think you get hot water in your house?
@@flyingcrab36 A water heater. A cylinder in my garage that burns gas to heat the water directly. No steam is ever involved. In every house I've lived in, in 3 different states, that's how it works. No boilers.
@@flyingcrab36 Boilers borrow a steam pipe from the street and wrap some water pipes around it to steal the heat. The steam is so hot it boils the water. This boiling water can be used to heat the building, or it can be used to heat some fresh water to wash your hands etc. A Water Heater has to make its own heat all by itself.
NY is an outdoor factory. On-site amenities
With as much snow as NY gets, I'm surprised they havent figured out a way to use it to heat the streets and sidewalks. That would basically get rid of a HUGE bill every year... It could be done with the steam after it heated the buildings. Instead of just venting it like they do.
So by delivering steam to customer, customer can turn it to electricity, water and hot at the same time interchangeably. In other place, they just deliver gas for boiler for heating, electricity for cooling and water independently. which one is better? I really want to know.
NYC the most environmentally friendly city on earth
Those vent pipes release the money into the air.
Urban steam reticulation is a pretty efficient energy transport system if it's maintained diligently.
New York is getting old. It's been neglected.
I see the how it's made guy is staying busy
The typical response I get when I tell people that steam is still used as a utility in the same vein as electricity in NYC and elsewhere is incredulity, they simply do not believe me. To so many people steam is just too archaic to be useful. To others its usefulness (in a commercial sense) lies in the generation of electricity and basically nowhere else.
edit: I'm not in a city that uses steam like this, but I'm only around 5 hours driving from both Boston and NYC, so it isn't like it isn't used in this region. Yet people here just do not learn about it. I only initially learned about it from being a history nerd.
This is cute. It doesn't actually point out that it's natural gas burning to heat all that steam. Doesn't even show you what a boiler is until 9 minutes in. Doesn't point out the carbon footprint if we're measuring what science says is environmentally friendly, just claims it's efficient. Yeah, compared to wood stoves. Idiocity, not Curiosity.
It solves all the problems of expanding cities with this newfangled technology... 150 years ago. So that's it, then. This is the sort of technology we should find the remains of in archaeological digs.
Impress your friends! That's water vapor you're seeing, not steam. Steam is invisible.
Bingo!
Lol, what? Steam is a gaming service, you silly you.
This is such a perfect use case for a boiling water nuclear reactor. The infrastructure is already there just pull out the gas turbine and drop in a reactor as a green source of steam. Completely decarbonize without changing the existing steam infrastructure
Simple right 😒
@@BrianStroud-d3p alot simpler than replacing all the infrastructure with something else. Its only as difficult as putting in a new gas plant.
GE is actually working on district heating projects in europe using a SMR BWR just like I suggested if you want to see an example, lookup the bwrx-300 district heating
They should definitely connect waste heat from power generation, waste incinerators, data centers etc. Also geothermal should be doable.
its still efficient to heat with steam due to it being generated with waste heat in the first place
Waste that shouldn't exist in the first place is being defended by being used in this antiquated system to recover a tiny amount of it.
@ in an ideal world, we burn no fossil fuels
but unfortunately, we do, and nyc has atleast been doing something for decandes to make it significantly less of a long term loose-loose than most utlities in the fuel to electrcity industry
How come hot water is not used but rather steam? I am guessing that the energy needs are so large that hot water could not transport what is needed? I am asking because using hot water with much lower pressure is of course safer.
next to no moving parts as the steam pressure is created by the waters expansion. I assume this is very convenient as opposed to pumping hot water up the tall buildings in New York.
More than anything the infrastructure is already there for steam so it’s easier to stick with it for now. New builds are more incentivized to use alternative means for heat but retrofitting an entire building is too expensive to be feasible
What do the steam stacks smell like? I'd have assumed they'd have no smell.
How many times are you guys going to upload this?
Yes
go to a different channel. Make your own channel.
@@mkhanman12345not you glazing cheddar news 🤣
Did I miss something, or did they not explain anything about why they use steam instead of water? My city is switching from steam to water for efficiency reasons, so the natural question is why did anyone use steam in the first place?
Moreover, how is the energy in the steam actually converted to heat in the individual room? Again, it’s easier to understand that hot water in a radiator heats the radio at or, which then heats the room.
From what watched, I would say that steam distribution was just much simplier back in the day. Just a boiler, a pressure tank and pipes and valves. Very little use of electric pumps ( require more sophisticated tech and regular supply of electricity). Since the infrustructure has been working for decades, there was never any incentive to shift to more modern systeams.
I always thought it was electrical fumes coming out and steaming
They should find some way to vent the steam without the ugly ass orange stacks blocking parts of the sidewalk, this is supposed to be the richest city in the world after all
They should move on. The steam era is long gone.
i get that they’re doing what they can right now, but did he just say “very clean methane gas” at the end 😂 like no, man.
15:49 The industries of the industrial revolution were powered by steam engines , not internal combustion engines.
The only difference with New York's system is the steam comes from centralised plants , not from a boiler for each site.
huh, interesting, don't think I ever notice them, surely this isn't the first NYC video I seen on youtube...
The red and white small stacks are releasing what’s called condensation this steam power goes back to Victorian times
The taller stack based on the colour of the smoke coming out of it getting close to black smoke may be an indication to a combination of plastic or rubber and maybe coal. You could also use steam to power a generator/ dc 3 phase to make electricity. In addition there are other ways to make electricity using other methods which I’m not going to go into as it’s currently being developed.
All I will say is it doesn’t involve nuclear. hydro.
Wind. Sea currents. Tidal. Or solar.
I like steam I like that heat and electrical system is 2 different things so if the electrical grid ever went out we would still have nice clean steam for heat all about diversity I think it’s kinda an untapped piece infrastructure I use a steam cleaner in my home
Your boilers need electricity to run, even steam. No electricity your zone valves and thermostats won’t work even steam needs electricity. Hydronic(water) or mini split lol all need electricity 24/7
@@BertBuild I’m no expert but pretty sure you still can have stand by power I mean they talked about how they could run their boilers off gas plus buildings can also have stand by generators incase of electrical grid failure it’s a redundant source of heat definitely not full proof in every situation I just wanted to try to come up with some positives seems like a lot of people hate steam in these comments lol
@@dylanmayes9555 yes the boilers do need gas or oil in constant supply and same with electricity. Only way to be redundant even a little bit is to have a generator hooked up
@@dylanmayes9555 steam is actually the best way to heat any space. There is a reason they used it all those years ago and it still is in use today. It’s cheap to maintain and water holds temperature better than almost any element on the periodic table. Thus making steam the best and most efficient way to transfer heat. New houses today use HVAC which is just blowing around air. Air does not conduct or retain its temperature even close to the same rate water and steam do
@@dylanmayes9555 I’m 10 years into plumbing haha been in my family since the 1970’s steam is epic lots of places around the world band it completely in the mid 1900’s because no one knew how to pipe systems right and they would explode is not done correctly. Europe is all hydronic not steam so it’s heating water and forcing that warm water around pipes in closed loops where as a steam boiler is literally taking a constant supply of water and turning it into steam much more dangerous but in USA we have strict codes and people like steam
I grew up in a steam heated house the boiler in the basement, oil fired steam system to radiators throughout the house
Damn you would think someone like THE Curiosity stream knows how to make their soundtrack -10db in the editing software
How do you weigh steam?
You measure the volume of the water being used to generate the steam; water weighs 8lbs per US Gallon. The weighed water is converted to steam
You fill a bucket with steam and put it in a scale, duh.
21:28 when a person does that with their hands.. you know they're lying
I thought a new game releases on Steam called NYC: Revealed 😂😂
I don’t understand why buildings can’t be converted to electricity. It seems very simple and logical.
Logical long-term thinking gets you outcompeted in the short term.
9:13 i.e Demineralized water
Steam valve broke! Can we still make bagels? sure, its just a little steamy.
Basically a lot of hot air makes the City run
I have a gas-fired hot-water heating system. Quiet and draftless. Converted from oil to gas in 2016 after a lot of regulatory BS relating to location of my oil tank.
If they are smart they can turn the water vapors into the fresh water or drinking waters
So all this water is used and what sent down the drain?
Is all the condensate simply vented? Shouldn't it be captured to use as feed as is done on a ship|?
this is the content that sponsors some of my favorite creators? oof
I would not brag about the fact that you are still using steam in 2024. This is not the old west times.
Yeah and what about the wheel?
That's SO 2000 bc!
When you want to live in an overcrowded city, you have to accept some negative stuff...
No one is talking about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide is it's gaseous form...
Steam-based AC is VERY VERY inefficient.
I would have thought the efficiency would be heinous?
HOW does the steam provide heat to buildings? Seven minutes in already and maybe you're getting to it.
They are called radiators, which are coiled metal pipe attached to a steampipe near the baseboards, sometimes they are mounted under the floors, which can be nice keeping the floors warm in winter and the incoming coldwater pipes from freezing through winter. They also continue to work when the electric grid goes down. They are more economical and renewable than central HVac heaters running off electricity.
Shes wearing a protect our natural shirt and talking down on eco friendly steam 😂 this is why our environment will never ne saved. People are ignorant
You know, the existence of this system HEAVILY weighs the odds in favor of a future Hydrogen economy.
saw a mudshaark in times square crowd taking vape from a nooker, besides that mudshaark in the people being interviewed
but isn't that steam tunrs into water again?
like for how much tiime it stays as a steam
These people are so incredibly ignorant 🤦♂
Wow. No wonder Americans are so easily fooled into voting for candidates and policies that conflict with their own self interest.
Americans *
Yep, Americans in general. They’re carefully conditioned from birth.
That's by design...
What are you talking about?
I would have preferred to see the actual numbers for cost over time comparisons against the many other solutions for HVAC and electric. Are these steam buildings single point of failures or can one back the other? Where was steam generated electricity when New York City has had three major blackouts, neither of which were forecast or expected. The first was in 1965, the second in 1977, and the latest in 2003. The 2003 was caused by a “software bug” in an installation near Akron. It is a reminder that energy consumption is not the only threat to an aged grid. It seems no one wants to look to far down the road since they will not get credit for something done now to make better in the future. The real driver for all is money and if CONED can just keep saying how great they are and everyone believes or trusts but does not verify then we are headed for problems.
Where does the water go when condensating after being used for heating.
Down the drain
@@dannywilkins887Seriously? What a waste!
@@Mrdannethere is no shortage of water in NYC. What would you suggest? Trucking it to Arizona?
@@CreachterZ It is still a lot of energy left in that water when going down the drain. Recirculating it back to the boiler would save a lot energy. But changing that infrastructure would be costly and complicated, so understand why it has not been done.
back to the plant.
No condensate collection or re-use? A bit wasteful. Also why not run hot glycol in the pipes instead of steam like other cities do?
So why tf they gotta put it in the middle of the road
Everywhere on Manhattan next to a building is in the middle of the road. The follow-up question is; what is the value of that area in the middle of the road on Manhattan and what are they paying for it?
“New York city is probably one of the cleanest drinking water systems in the world.” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
It is.
It's actually known for that, and for it's taste. Foo name your city 😂 Let's see what jokes we got for you
lmao unsurprised the FBA type is a moron in general
It is.
It's not at all known for that.... Idk who told y'all that bold faced lie lmaooo maybe if you're a customer of con Edison who gets their steam to your home your drinking water is decent at best... otherwise the trash filled water resources in NYC is the safest tap...yeah right
The 🐀 lives better than most residents in 🗽with constant steam/heat throughout the 🥶❄.