Using Winter Cold to Cool Summer Heat

Using Winter Cold to Cool Summer Heat

This is an idea that I ‘ve had for a while – and an idea, which I thought was totally unique. A quick Google search however shows that this is not a new idea.

The idea occurred to me when I watched trucks being loaded with snow after a heavy snowstorm in Hartford, Connecticut. I remember thinking that we’d be pleased to have that cool snow in the summer.

In essence the idea would be to construct a lined pit near the Connecticut River. It would be covered with a heavy steel grate – so that trucks could dump their snow on to the grate and thereby into the pit. This would serve two purposes  -

1. it would provide a location for Hartford to dispose of  its snow as it was removed from the streets.
2. it depositing it in this location the snow would be stored and be made available for cooling the summer.

In addition, when the weather was cold, water from the river could be pumped into the hole and allowed to freeze as well. The idea would be to have the pit essentially filled with ice by the end of the winter. During the spring some melting would occur – however be virtue of being underground, lined, and covered a good portion of the ice would remain frozen until the beginning of the cooling season. A network of pipes would conduct the melted ice into a cooling loop circulating between downtown buildings.

I don’t have the cooling requirements for the building but it would seem to me that at least a good portion of the business communities cooling could be met through this process.

Googling the idea – revealed to me that this is a known process called district heating and cooling. A good example of this is the city of St. Paul which uses biomass from downed trees to provide the majority of downtown St. Paul’s heat and in the summer creates chilled water at night –using off peak electricity – for use in daytime cooling. 

The website of the city of St. Paul discuss this in the following link:

http://www.stpaul.gov/index.aspx?NID=501

The idea advance above is an extension of that idea – broadening the time frame for cooled water from beyond night to day – to between seasons.