From the UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA OKANAGAN CAMPUS and the “department of bad science fair submissions” comes this study, complete with ridiculous photo. There’s only one problem, most housing and office infrastructure isn’t setup to handle snow storage, and snow is most often stored in parking lots. What’s even funnier is that they had to use a model to try this….in Canada, a place where snow piles are abundant, even a nuisance.
You’d think if this was a workable idea, they’d actually try it with an HVAC system instead of modeling it. I’m sure they could find a snowpile somewhere nearby. Here is the press release below.
Snow could reduce need for air conditioning
A recent UBC study shows that snow cleared from winter roads can help reduce summer air-conditioning bills.
The UBC study, a computer modelling exercise, found directing a building’s air handling units through a snow dump–snow collected and stored from winter road clearing operations–can reduce the need to use air conditioning during warmer parts of the year.
“What this study shows is that it is possible to use snow to reduce electricity consumption in structures such as apartment buildings,” says Kasun Hewage, an associate professor of engineering at UBC’s Okanagan campus. “We also now know that using material from snow dumps to cool buildings can also help to reduce the greenhouse gasses that air conditioning units emit.”
The study included simulations for large buildings and accounted for the different types of equipment needed in both conventional systems with industrial cooling units and snow-dump based systems, which insulate snow collected during winter months to use during the summer.
“While further research is needed, the potential of this type of system to be used for large buildings and institutions looks promising,” says Rehan Sadiq, a professor of engineering at UBC’s campus in Kelowna. “Aside from making good use of waste material, this type of system could eventually help large organizations such as municipalities recoup some of the considerable costs associated with snow removal.”
The study–done in collaboration with UBC graduate student Venkatesh Kumar–was recently published in the journal Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy.
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Funny thing about this, I happened upon this company’s web site just this week.
They use ice for batteries for the HVAC system.
https://www.ice-energy.com/
I can Garrrunnnteee it that this process will be far more costly than is touted.
Just like California Gas and MTBE
We were informed that the cost of gas would go up due to the needed changes to infrastructure at refineries to accomodate the addition of MTBE to Gasoline. Later, when it was discovered that MTBE used in Power Boats, Jet Skis, and other motorized personal water craft, was causing a contamination problem in the Fresh Water supply, we were informed that it would cost even more to NOT add MTBE into the Gasoline supply.
Any changes always cost more
Point taken, but the MBTE example is a bad one. It wasn’t removing the MBTE that cost more, it was the fact you had to replace it with another oxygen source (ethanol.) If they had simply gone back to no additive, the cost would have come back down.
In areas where there are a significant number of days well below freezing, dig a big hole in the ground, water proof line it, put in piping & water and freeze in the winter using external fans with anti-freeze & water/radiator through the piping; then extract cooling in the summer when electric rates are higher.
That would be the “ice rooms” seen throughout the UK where well off aristocrats chilled their food and wine. Nothing new under the sun!
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/florence-court/features/explore-the-sustainable-estate-at-florence-court
I don’t think I quite get the Ice Bear. It seems that they compare it to electrical batteries, but then say it “charges” by making ice, the “discharges” by cooling with said made ice. So all you can use it for is cooling, but they talk about “storage”. Unless I missed something, it only stores ice, not electricity.
I don’t get it either. At first I thought it was just creating ice to cool the HVAC, but it is using the ice like a battery to store electricity like you would with a salt water battery.
Really useful idea in Australia!
You forgot the SARC tag.
No wuckers! Australia administers the Australian Antarctic Territory so we could truck it in. No need to worry about import duties 🙂
There is a protocol for snow removal – heavily trafficked streets and roads first, and so on down to small residential neighbourhoods, which are last. Priority depends on how many people use that particular road. In residential neighbourhoods, the snow is usually just plowed to the side of the road and left there. In parking lots, it is often just plowed to one spot and left there. The parking lot gets smaller as winter goes on. Usually snow is completely removed only from major streets and commercial areas, because those areas are the ones that are needed to keep the city functioning.
Sorry, that post was for ozspeaksup
no snow but…our smarter oldtimers DID use pipes in trenches under homes(along with in ground cool cellars) to channel cooled air at ground temp up into houses storage pantries.
i was musing on giving it a go in my house as its wooden above ground and sort of accessible to try n dig trenches under. i know people who did have n use that system and they swore it worked pretty well.
my Q is WHY??dont they compress snow to make it more like icebricks??? as they’d be far less bulky than loose snow and rather stackable and could be stored in huge pits with channeling to draw cooled air from.
later the water would keep gardens etc alive in bad summers or be used on public gardens etc to cool civic areas.
Ozspeaksup says, “WHY??dont they compress snow to make it more like icebricks??? as they’d be far less bulky than loose snow and rather stackable and could be stored in huge pits with channeling to draw cooled air from.
later the water would keep gardens etc alive in bad summers or be used on public gardens etc to cool civic areas.”
In Canadian cities where there is enough snow to consider this, it is usually cleared off the streets and taken somewhere to be dumped. At that point, it’s not loose snow – it’s compacted and extremely heavy to lift, as anyone who has had to shovel after the snow plow has gone by can attest. In the spring the stacked snow melts.
You can’t use the water from the plowed snow for your garden, because the roads are treated with large amounts of salt and gravel to make it safer to drive (loose snow that is driven on quickly turns to ice). Plus there are other goodies that end up in the plowed snow, like the odd bit of trash, or broken glass.
In the city where I live, springtime brings out the city street-sweeping machines to clean all the gravel off the roads from the previous winter. There is a lot of gravel, and it takes them several weeks to clean it all up.
You could have the snow and ice delivered via ship!
I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada … never did I use AC once, if it’s warm inside I open the windows. Temperature in summer rarely goes beyond 25C or 77F. This is Canada, we needs saving to our heating bills rather than AC
build an XL sized pipe line to Texas and ship your snow to where it’s needed. You’ll get millions of carbon credits for the project.
… and if it does not work out you can always sell the pipeline to someone else 😉
That’s not an option for large factories and office buildings.
When I was in Atlanta, I noticed that the office building I worked in would still be using the air conditioner even when the air temperatures dropped to the low 50’s.
Too much internal heat (people, lights, computers) and too little surface area. The better the insulation, the worse this problem became.
One possibility would be to modify the blowers so that they can either pull air through the AC/heater, or pull air from outside. I don’t know how much such a modification would cost. There’s also issues with filtering the air and dealing with humidity.
How much does it snow in Atlanta?
I visited Atlanta some 20 years ago, after a minor (4 inch) snowfall. The traffic ground to a full stop. An enterprising guy in a 4wd truck took me to my hotel from the airport. No public transportation, no taxicabs.
The ‘smart’ HVAC systems being built today do just that. The compressor for AC does not kick in if outside air is cool enough, yet internal, window sealed, insulation thick offices with abundant internal heat being generated are too warm. Ours is this way at my office and the ‘AC’ can literally kick in when it gets above about 35F outside. Crazy as it may seem.
Only an inch or two every few years.
However my response was to Nash who commented about being able to open his house windows instead of using the AC.
CG: For a city like Atlanta, it costs a lot less to just shut the city down for a day once every 3 to 5 years, than it would to maintain the equipment necessary to handle that snow.
That and the fact that the people in Atlanta only get to practice their snow driving skills once every 5 years or so.
I remember a new year’s eve about 15y back. I was invited to a party at friend’s house in southern France.
There was a few inches of snow ( like 2 or 3″ ) and everyone was out of control like it was a natural disaster.
Some goof was trying to pull up a 1 in 10 road leaving the city and was unable to pull away, having stopped in traffic.
As I over took him on my 1957 Norton motorbike, I tapped on the window and suggested he stopped revving the arse off it and tried pulling away gently. Much french arm waving and “ce n’est pas possible” and I said ‘fine’ and pulled away up the hill.
Having successfully navigated the equivalent of the NW passage on two wheels , we all had a great night !!
The outside-air mixer is called an Economizer. It’s an option on most large-scale ACs. The best economizers are controlled by the unit based on inside and outside temperature as well as humidity. Some even go based off CO2 concentration, as it can be significant on heavily populated indoor areas with heavy recycle on the air.
Curious George
Similar to London – except here, we are economical and get the same effect – gridlock from less than 4 centimetres of snow!
Mods – NO – not sarc.
If only it was.
I remember one night – 2009 maybe – trying to get home from right by the Bank of England.
London Bridge station was fine – per web – when I left the office.
16 minutes later, when I arrived, it had nothing moving.
You don’t even try waiting then!
I got on a bus.
2 hours later I bailed out at Brixton – three miles at best – as nothing, that is n o t h i n g was going up Brixton Hill with half an inch of ice.
Forty minutes after eating in Brixton, I was back in the office. Stayed overnight.
Auto – memories . . . .
Around 1995, I gave a lecture at a company in Philadelphia. Bad time to be in Philly, because the weather at that time was so cold and the city iced over, all manufacturing companies had been ordered to shut down to conserve energy for home heating. The lecture had to go on, though. I was teaching them how to design new computer control systems based around PowerPC and our lab equipment consisted of 6 Compaq 1994 era tanks each with an YARC (Yet Another RISC Computer) IBM PPC601 development card installed. The air temp in the very large but devoid of people building was in the mid-40F range, the air temp in the 20 person lecture room was about 85F. We had to keep the door open to keep the computers from overheating!
That bad winter weather in Philadelphia happened in early 1994. Around Harrisburg, the Susquehanna River froze and coal shipments stopped, causing an electricity shortage that led to “rolling blackouts”. There were a lot of ice storms as well as one heck of a cold snap that set some records, including an alltime record low for Harrisburg – which happened after the worst of the ice storms, and the ice lingered a long time. The worst of the ice storms also shut down mail delivery in Philadelphia, which is very uncommon.
Unbelievably, in Philadelphia the winter overall was abnormally officially average – with almost perfectly average figures for temperature, total precipitation and snowfall for the winter as a whole. The snowfall figure includes sleet, of which there was plenty that winter. And a very unusually large amount of that winter’s rain fell while it was below freezing.
On the other hand, Philadelphia’s summers of 1991 through 1995 were extremely hot.
Every year Calgary get multiple days over 30°C/86°F (typically 5 days). While I also don’t have AC, there are some days that I sure would like it.
Are there “snow dumps” around on those days?
Right, so for 5 days per year what kind of snow storage invest are you prepared to invest in?
Sounds like a local architech who wanted to design a pair of “sustainable” houses. He had some good ideas but wanted to heat a reserve of water under the house in summer to use as heating in the winter.
I said it sounds like BS, but let’s run the numbers. About 5min on the back of an envelop and I had convinced him to stop messing around unless he wanted to excavate a large volume of rock under the house and install 1m thick insulation for the reservoir.
Indians are canny businessmen and it looks like this pair have worked out how to sell snow storage to canadians. Kudos !
30C isn’t very hot. In Canberra (one of the colder parts of Australia) it is over 30C for most of the summer. It frequently goes over 40C, which I’ll admit, one does start to feel.
We moved to Everett, WA in 1979 and have never had AC because we really didn’t need it and still don’t. Yes, it gets hot for a couple of weeks in August but a fan makes it bearable, so it is not worth the cost to put in AC. We are at 48 degrees North Latitude and the Pacific Ocean drives our climate. People in Canada really don’t need AC except for office buildings.
They shouldn’t need much AC in BC. Just open the window.
Any place that gets that much snow probably doesn’t need much AC. Those places that need AC, like my FLA home, don’t get snow.
Perhaps they can truck snow from the mountains to FT Myers and reduce CO2 emissions.
Trucking that much snow would only create more deadly CO2. Perhaps a pipeline or better yet snow rafts conveyed on river currents would solve the problem. There is a precedent for the latter method. There was serious research during WWII on the feasibility of building aircraft carriers out of reinforced ice for use escorting convoys in the North Atlantic. Go ahead, google ‘pykrete’ if you don’t believe me.
They could transport it by trains “Coal Death Trains”
They could use the Coal as an insulator to ensure the snow doesn’t melt.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this idea out of hand. I may be wrong, but isn’t it used in Japan?
Don’t forget, the heat of fusion is about 80 calories per gram. That’s a lot of wasted heat (or cooling) in my opinion. Oh, by the way. When I was young, refrigerators didn’t exist. We had ice boxes. In the winter, the ice would be taken from the St. Lawrence river, stored in a warehouse in sawdust and delivered to household ice boxes by horse and cart in the summer. A block of ice cost 25 cents and would last nearly a week.
It seems there’s nothing new under the sun.
Old Guy, you don’t need to look up such exotic references. It would be better to look up ice harvesting and transport methods. The pole-it-on-a-raft was apparently popular.
Trebla, yes, I will dismiss it out of hand, with one senetence. THIS IS AN ICEBOX. The reason that iceboxes went out of popularity wasn’t that they didn’t work. It was because the energy involved in harvesting, storing, and transporting ice was an order of magnitude greater than the energy you could save using even 1950s refrigerators and freezers.
I remember Pykrete. Pyke was a bit of a mad scientist. As I recall, Pykrete was made from a mixture of sawdust and freezing water, creating extremely tough blocks of ice. Not easy to make, but not easy for a sub to sink. I don’t think they got far with the idea.
CO2 is not deadly, it is plant food.
Why not just tow an ice berg from all those that break off Greenland due to warming.
Dick Smith did it as an April Fool’s day stunt once. He faked an ice berg on a boat and moored it in Sydney Harbour. Amusing, but more serious suggestions have been mad to mount engines on ice floating off Antarctica and bring them to Australia that way.
Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world. It has every climate you can think of. In fact, Kelowna (where this study was done) is semi-arid; not far away is an actual desert. Kelowna typically gets 25 days of over 30°C/86°F, two of which are over 35°C/95°F. AC is very much needed there, much more so than heating (they typically have only 10 days below -10°C/14°F).
“Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world. It has every climate you can think of.”
I may believe that about NZ, but remind me about the tropical parts of Canada. Mangroves? Boiling mud?
Yep, tar sands are pretty cool.
Jeff
“AC is very much needed there, much more so than heating (they typically have only 10 days below -10°C/14°F).”
Appreciating that Kelowna is indeed in Canada, and h habitations there will be insulated, a couple of days here, in South London, at about 3C overnight, mean ‘Heating on’.
-10C . Gulp!!
We have had a very few days here there.
Indeed, we have had -18C at the bottom of the hill.
Once.
In our frost trap.
I believe that was the lowest temperature – ever – recorded in Surrey, in >150 years.
Ummmm – Goodness [Mods – accept, please] – that really was quite cool walking to the station.
Auto, hoping that winters will be mild, not Cool/cold.
For everyone.
Everywhere.
Yeah …. we’ll need insulated snow-storage facilities to keep it ‘white’ into the height of summer, and refrigeration to maintain the int. temp. below freezing, of course ……. Say no more.
And where are we supposed to store this snow when it is 100F outside?
They don’t store it. When it melts away, go back to 100% AC.
Next will be to leave “normal” houses ans start living in an ice caves during summers.
Beer cooler maybe.
So why not go back to hauling huge cuts of ice from lakes and store it in big buildings with sawdust all summer – like they did when my grandparents got their first “icebox” with a daily ice block delivery along with milk. 😉
They didn’t have two cars for every household parked on both sides of the street in most towns or cities. Nor did they have bumper to bumper traffic most hours of the day making delivery tedious. And in some parts of the USA taking your life in your hands delivering in Gobmin’ projects up elevators lol. If you desire ice most convenient stores have ice coolers with bagged ice–maybe you can make that work. How about you start a delivery service all your own. Maybe you can start a franchise–let me know how that works for you.
Not sure why you’re assigning me as a supporter of this pre-electric method of food storage. We currently burn wood for heat, cook with n-gas and have a 12 ft fire pit in which anything they won’t pick up curb side gets reduced to ashes along with ample forest debris to pick up and burn, spring, summer & fall.
Your clue for sarcasm was the winky face…
I saw something like this in either Popular Science or Popular Mechanics back in the 70’s.
Somebody had proposed digging a pit, pushing snow into it during the winter, then covering it some kind of white insulating tarp once spring hit. Then using the melt water to cool the building for the early part of spring and summer.
Never caught on obviously. However if the green weenies keep forcing energy prices up, it might happen.
It might be useful in a place with a radically variable climate like South Korea. but ignores the cost of storage space in an urban environment.
One other consideration. If this is snow removed from the roads they want to use, imagine the dirt and salt that would be packed into their storage unit, and how well would it hold up. I can see the typical “downtown area now, modern building alternating with 6 story storage boxes filled with sand, salt and snow all along main street. Sadly, this study was funded, I’m sure.
Each year after your pile melts away, you would have to send in a team to clean out the dirt and salt.
Yet another cost.
Not to mention all the bird piss and poop, garbage, trash, pieces of broken pavement, rocks and anything else found lurking in parking lots and on roadways.
Most of the birds have flown south by the time it starts snowing.
“While further research is needed, the potential of this type of system to be used for large buildings and institutions looks promising”
Translation: Please send more money so we don’t have to get a real job.
I notice that the claim that AC units “emit” greenhouse gases. The only thing I know they emit is cold air.
Depends on which end of the refrigeration cycle you’re on. The bits on the outside generally emit hot air while the bits on the inside emit cold air. As for the greenhouse gas claim, only if the refrigerant leaks out. And if that happens, no more cold air on the inside.
A few comments.
These guys are from the OKANAGAN, they don’t really get snow there, so I can understand that they couldn’t try this on site.
Second, “can reduce the need to use air conditioning during warmer parts of the year”. There are no snow piles during warmer parts of the year. What on earth are these guys talking about?
Third, oddly, most office building use air conditioning even when it is fairly cold outside. All the infrastructure within the building tends to heat it up, requiring cooling. So, during a mild spell in the winter, yes this could possibly be done. Of course, you would have to do significant modifications to the building HVAC system….
Jeff as a resident , I have to admit we do not get the same snowfall as Albertans but after having to shovel our driveway for the last 45 years I can tell you it can hang around for months. This study is stupid a sure fire way for more funding requests but did any of you look at the picture and noticed the sign on the building?
“Winners”….. yeah right.
Jeff, btw I am embarrassed that this came from this campus, in all it is a great university and boon to our community but this kind of thing does a lot of damage to their image, very sad , this stuff ( well s.it) should never be published.
Couple of years ago I was in St John, New Brunswick in June. They had had so much snow the previous year that there was still a 10-foot pile where it had been dumped. But that was clearly unusual, because about 15 people made a point of mentioning it to me.
Hope they accounted for the air conditioning needed to preserve the snow piles until summer!
Three questions,
1) How much energy does it take to collect snow, (it’s really very heavy once you start to plow the stuff).
2) How much energy does it take to transport snow into areas where it’s going to be needed, like trucking it to Arizona, since most cooler climates, where snow is plentiful, (like the Upper Great Lakes), really don’t have that much of a need for regular air conditioning. Twelve days is typical for our annual use of the whole house air conditioner here in Northern Michigan.
3) What is the cost of building a structure(s) to store the snow for when it’s needed? I suspect that a well insulated building, that could hold 1000 cubic yards of snow, would cost around $60K. For 60K you could easily install a nice small windmill, and a couple of 16 cubic foot freezers to make enough ice to offset the windless periods and have about $35K left in your pocket.
“…Three questions,
1) How much energy does it take to collect snow, (it’s really very heavy once you start to plow the stuff)…”
Didn’t you see the photo? People will use shovels. Ok, some energy will be needed indirectly to provide their food, clothing, etc…
Even in Minnesota, large office buildings use AC for much of the year.
Gaia worship is truly a mental disorder along the lines of liberalism in general.
… and it’s getting worse… metastasizing, infecting, and putrefying every aspect of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.. Truly pathologic.
The cure is to cut off the access to OPM (other people’s money).
The Greens should fund a high-speed railroad to transport it down to the Mojave Desert then on to LA, they could even use a carbon tax to help pay for it…… oh wait.
And when it melts, water their lawns with it…brilliant!!
You can’t just use it for your lawn – it’s full of salt. You’d have to distill it first.
This is a recycled idea from the sixteenth century. Before refrigeration, beer pubs got ice from nearby rivers and lakes, stored it in a deep cellar, and stored beer barrels on the top of it.
I’m reminded of the song “Poor Judd is Dead” from the musical Oklahoma:
“It looks like he’s asleep;
It’s a shame that he won’t keep;
But it’s summer
And we’re running out of ice!”
Well someone is going to say it… wasn’t snow suppose to be a thing of the past? “Children were not going to know what snow is” Or such rubbish.
So riddle me this what type of fool funds research into using snow for habitat cooling while at the same time warns of catastrophic snow melting warming.
Hmm,,
michael
Yes, but it’s rotten snow. ;->
Ah, progress: Children are not going to know what snow is… and with widespread adoption of this approach, when they grow up they won’t know what air conditioning is.
Oh my! What a brilliant idea! it could also be used to save money on refrigeration for food in homes .. it could be called an “Ice Box” with a large block of ice inside to keep the food cold! Wow such amazing technology!
/sarc just in case its needed.
Cheers!
Joe
What goes around comes around! This is how it was done, back in the “good ole’ days.” The company I work for was actually involved in the “Frozen Water Trade” long ago, before refrigeration. Cutting blocks of ice from frozen northern rivers and shipping them south.
This is a brilliant idea. I just wonder why countries like India or Egypt etc haven’t thought of this before because it’s such a simple and elegant idea? I can’t wait till the next heat wave to try it out.
India is prepared to play thier part in combatting climate change but they want $2.5tn and mega carbon credits every year for the indefinite future since, they do not have the means themselves.
They have a scheme for transporting ice cold water from the Himalayas to the Ganges basin but need a lot of financial help to get the project off the ground ( so to speak ) .
They will also require compensation when the wicked west has caused so much global warming that there are not glaciers left ( estimation: 2035 )
They said the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2030.
When I was a child in Egypt we had an ice box that relied on a daily ice delivery. Unfortunately we had to check the cleaner, who would rinse it out and leave it in the sun to dry! The wonder of our first ‘fridge remains with me; it was a Kelvinator. I still have no idea where the daily ice was produced.
Quite a long time ago (like 3000 years or more) they used to cut ice blocks from lakes/rivers and collect snow and store the ice and snow in (aptly named) ice houses. This could then be used to preserve perishable foods throughout the year.
All this idea changed is to blow air through the ice house to cool the air down and then send it back into the building for A/C.
So the practicality of this was well known historically and the use of any time and money to (re)research it was insane.
It counts as research in the new normal of science and promotions.