You’re really caught up on energy efficiency, civil engineering is not just thermodynamics. Energy is becoming incredibly cheap, before the current administration derailed our energy sector, we were on track to hit $0.03/kWh for utility scale renewable power by 2030. For reference, that’s about $10 to clear that city block.
And again, systems like this and the more famous one in Holland MI are generally run on waste heat (from a power plant, wastewater treatment plant or datacenter), so that math doesn’t even apply. Looking only at energy cost leaves you tripping over dollars to save pennies.
The real costs are and always have been infrastructure. Yes, it’s not possible to use this as a drop-in everywhere. It highly depends on the usage/wear of the road, space constraints, upfront cost of installation, maintenance, access to a heating solution, etc, etc… Even with this hydronic layout the main costs are the transmission lines, the cost to heat them is minor.
It’s very weird to see so much resistance to this in an anti-car community, as if pedestrian and micromobility infrastructure doesn’t need snow removal too.
Not an excuse for wastefulness. The numbers here are so great that a good sized city would need a nuclear reactor brought online just for this.
systems like this and the more famous one in Holland MI are generally run on waste heat
That’s fine if it’s available. It’s usually heavy industry that’s providing that. If you don’t have a convenient heavy industry to provide that, then move on.
It’s very weird to see so much resistance to this in an anti-car community, as if pedestrian and micromobility infrastructure doesn’t need snow removal too.
What of it? There’s perfectly good plows for walking and biking paths, too.
Every single study shows it saving money in the long run. It’s already in use and doesn’t cause problems because professionals spend more thought and time on it than armchair internet engineers. You’re tilting at windmills.
a good sized city would need a nuclear reactor brought online just for this.
I mean maybe if our cities existed in Antarctica and experience 3"+ of snow per hour nearly every day year round and we insisted on keeping 40% of our city footprint as roads. How are cities currently running these systems? Somehow I haven’t heard of any of them building extra nuclear reactors or going broke?
You realize that power use fluctuates and thermal energy storage is a dead simple, ancient technology? That the majority of snowfall happens overnight when power demand is at a minimum? You’re just waving around napkin math with no concept of how anything actually works.
It’s usually heavy industry that’s providing that. If you don’t have a convenient heavy industry to provide that, then move on.
So we’re just making things up now? CHP plants no longer exist? 17k water treatment plants and 4k datacenters using a combined 8-10% of all US power just vanished? Renewable power surpluses no longer need to be stored?
There’s perfectly good plows for walking and biking paths
Isn’t the goal in reducing car based infrastructure to cut the number of roads and make infrastructure more efficient? Instead of scaling heating costs to be smaller and more manageable you’d rather keep the fixed costs of a full vehicle fleet and the fixed damage of plowing and deicing? Your argument makes no sense at any scale.
If you want to talk about energy waste how about starting with the kWh you spend defying basic common sense over the internet.
You’re really caught up on energy efficiency, civil engineering is not just thermodynamics. Energy is becoming incredibly cheap, before the current administration derailed our energy sector, we were on track to hit $0.03/kWh for utility scale renewable power by 2030. For reference, that’s about $10 to clear that city block.
And again, systems like this and the more famous one in Holland MI are generally run on waste heat (from a power plant, wastewater treatment plant or datacenter), so that math doesn’t even apply. Looking only at energy cost leaves you tripping over dollars to save pennies.
The real costs are and always have been infrastructure. Yes, it’s not possible to use this as a drop-in everywhere. It highly depends on the usage/wear of the road, space constraints, upfront cost of installation, maintenance, access to a heating solution, etc, etc… Even with this hydronic layout the main costs are the transmission lines, the cost to heat them is minor.
It’s very weird to see so much resistance to this in an anti-car community, as if pedestrian and micromobility infrastructure doesn’t need snow removal too.
Not an excuse for wastefulness. The numbers here are so great that a good sized city would need a nuclear reactor brought online just for this.
That’s fine if it’s available. It’s usually heavy industry that’s providing that. If you don’t have a convenient heavy industry to provide that, then move on.
What of it? There’s perfectly good plows for walking and biking paths, too.
Every single study shows it saving money in the long run. It’s already in use and doesn’t cause problems because professionals spend more thought and time on it than armchair internet engineers. You’re tilting at windmills.
I mean maybe if our cities existed in Antarctica and experience 3"+ of snow per hour nearly every day year round and we insisted on keeping 40% of our city footprint as roads. How are cities currently running these systems? Somehow I haven’t heard of any of them building extra nuclear reactors or going broke?
You realize that power use fluctuates and thermal energy storage is a dead simple, ancient technology? That the majority of snowfall happens overnight when power demand is at a minimum? You’re just waving around napkin math with no concept of how anything actually works.
So we’re just making things up now? CHP plants no longer exist? 17k water treatment plants and 4k datacenters using a combined 8-10% of all US power just vanished? Renewable power surpluses no longer need to be stored?
Isn’t the goal in reducing car based infrastructure to cut the number of roads and make infrastructure more efficient? Instead of scaling heating costs to be smaller and more manageable you’d rather keep the fixed costs of a full vehicle fleet and the fixed damage of plowing and deicing? Your argument makes no sense at any scale.
If you want to talk about energy waste how about starting with the kWh you spend defying basic common sense over the internet.