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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
We had steam heat in our classrooms in the 1950s in New Jersey. The radiator would make noises and sometimes the teacher would open windows. I also remember when steam came out of the manholes in streets and sidewalk grates before they used stacks.
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.
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 RUclips had a button to remove background music though haha
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 .
Going by his description, "increase electricity and you decrease steam", it's unlikely they're using cogeneration with gas turbines. More likely they just run the boilers and then have seperate steam turbines they can redirect the steam to. The pressure reduction methods used in the buildings is pretty inefficient too, they're just dropping the pressure using pressure reducing valves. Replacing those with backpressure steam turbines would generate electricity from the drop in pressure.
The solution was not steam per se, it was a distributed/shared system for delivering steam from dedicated power plants to a large pool of customers. Before that each building had to have it’s own means of storing fuel and heating water to generate its own steam.
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
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.
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.
WHY THE BACKGROUND MUSIC????? Such an important documentary for me at least who don't live in the US, completely destroyed with the music. I'm looking for this topic elsewhere without background music.
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
Is it a completely open loop system? I've never heard them talk about heat exchangers or condensate return? I missed a lot of technical foundation in tthe episode
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
As I am an Australian I find this fascinating. I had a Christmas in NY and stayed with friends in Manhattan and I just couldn’t believe the apartment was kept warm by a pipe that was full of stream. For me it was unbearable.
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.
I haven't been there in about 40 years but I don't remember the steam ever being smelly when I was there, anyway. I wonder why it smells now? It must be pooling in places around those accordion tubes and becoming fetid...? I also remember learning that the extensive use of florescent bulbs in so many of the buildings in the city actually throw enough heat to warm the building.
Combined cycle cogeneration system. Gas turbines turn generators to produce electricity and the waste heat operates boilers and the exhaust steam is what is sent to the end users. I have been an Engineer for over 50 years and am at work right now at a hospital.
Maybe i missed it in the video, but what happens after the heat is "used" and the steam condensades? Is it a closed system and the water is returned to the plants or does it end as waste water?
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.
As a Swede where we use hot water thru pipes in the street I would like to know what the advantages is with steam over hot water just under the boiling point?
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.
The only thing they never even touched on was the condensate. Does every building pump it back to the plant or are they just dumping it. And the plant is running on 100% make up water
Stayed in a NYC apartment that had steam heat. Was spring and the radiator wouldn't turn off. Main tenant told me to "just turn on the AC". Seriously... 😀
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?
Each customer is required to first reduce the temperature of the condensate (which in many cases that heat is recovered and used to "pre-heat" hot water thereby reducing energy consumption). The water then goes into the sewage system. Each customer is then charged for the disposal as a percentage of the steam consumed.
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 😮
In your country, you are using more water and more fuel because water has a higher latent heat content. Also, water has greater friction long the inner walls of the pipe as compared to steam. Unless your country is Iceland. Where geothermal energy is used those negatives are negligible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Mostly a myth. It depends on what the vapor is passing underneath the street before it exits the column. Typically it just "smells" like moist air and because its warmer than the surrounding air, it's traveling upward and you would never "smell" it anyway.
One of the sad things about using steam, is the fact that we don’t use the heat produced by boiling water into steam.. our energy is produced due to the fact that that water expands 600 times its volume when converted into a gas.. we use the expansion of the gasses, in he form of pressure, to spin turbines to create energy.. all the energy we put into heating the steam is wasted .. we burn millions of tons of coal and natural gas to heat up water so it will expand, then vent the steam into the atmosphere, where the heat exchanges into the cold air around it, dropping its temperature, which causes the steam to condense back into water, and end up in lakes, rivers and oceans
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.
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.
@@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.
6:45 - THANK YOU, however uncomfortable it was to remove it, for removing the corporate "steam facts" commercial PowerPoint from the video... Sorry you had to sit through that one. Oof.
@ 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
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.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
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.
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.
It's kinda funny that people are concerned about energy being wasted, but aren't really concerned about much energy traffic lights use.
Wasn’t this by design? They wanted the buildings to be warm while keeping windows open for fresh air
Absolutely not@@anthonyinfanti4340
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Who the fuck asked?
We had steam heat in our classrooms in the 1950s in New Jersey. The radiator would make noises and sometimes the teacher would open windows. I also remember when steam came out of the manholes in streets and sidewalk grates before they used stacks.
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.
More like Curiosity Steam amirite?
😂😂😂😂
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ get out!
Lol
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 RUclips 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!
"the cleanest drinking water in the world" as a European this made laugh
I’ve always wondered about the steam situation. Now I see why so many villains have been steamed in the face on films underground haha.
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 .
Going by his description, "increase electricity and you decrease steam", it's unlikely they're using cogeneration with gas turbines.
More likely they just run the boilers and then have seperate steam turbines they can redirect the steam to.
The pressure reduction methods used in the buildings is pretty inefficient too, they're just dropping the pressure using pressure reducing valves. Replacing those with backpressure steam turbines would generate electricity from the drop in pressure.
They never explained or addressed why the exhaust steam pipes smell like shit
The solution was not steam per se, it was a distributed/shared system for delivering steam from dedicated power plants to a large pool of customers. Before that each building had to have it’s own means of storing fuel and heating water to generate its own steam.
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
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.
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.
Took a while during this video to reveal the actual source/type of fuel used to actually make the steam, 21:10, methane gas.
Natural gas, not methane
@@CreekJohnson-h9gI mean if you watched through to 21:36 the plant manager definitely does say methane gas
WHY THE BACKGROUND MUSIC?????
Such an important documentary for me at least who don't live in the US, completely destroyed with the music.
I'm looking for this topic elsewhere without background music.
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
Can you remove the background noise. Too much distracting
Is it a completely open loop system? I've never heard them talk about heat exchangers or condensate return? I missed a lot of technical foundation in tthe episode
Yes, it is an open loop system. It's incredibly wasteful.
So in short: each steam stack represents a fault in the system.
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
I've always wondered why snow melts way faster in Manhattan compared to the boroughs outside of it. This might explain it.
This is so fascinating! From Australia so had no idea about all this! Wonder if this is where steam punk started haha
As I am an Australian I find this fascinating. I had a Christmas in NY and stayed with friends in Manhattan and I just couldn’t believe the apartment was kept warm by a pipe that was full of stream. For me it was unbearable.
its nice that they are using the leftover lower preshure steam aftter generating electric
In Russia steam is free : it is mostly used for heating but it can also cool down up to a certain point.
The constant soundtrack is distracting from what is being said--talk about lazy editing. Brutal.
go watch a different video, then
@@Johnnynbk things improve when people provide feedback.
Agreed. Music adds nothing. Except for the easily amused
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.
Many people on YT hate when people say thing they don't like hearing.
I haven't been there in about 40 years but I don't remember the steam ever being smelly when I was there, anyway. I wonder why it smells now? It must be pooling in places around those accordion tubes and becoming fetid...? I also remember learning that the extensive use of florescent bulbs in so many of the buildings in the city actually throw enough heat to warm the building.
For an example of what size power plants large buildings would need to have if they had their own, check out Ocean Casino in Atlantic City.
Whats amazing, is that steam can heat a building even at pressures as low as 2 psi. As well, steam travels very fast through pipes.
Excellent content guys 👏 👏.
Keep up the good work!!!
glad you dudes can't hoard this content
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..
Steam could run more things than just heating, saved a lot on electricity and gas demands when they were building the system in 19th century.
Because it's America...
Minneapolis runs on High pressure steam as well, while our sister city St Paul runs on high pressure hot water.
❤❤❤❤ Awesome!
"Reduced _down"?_
As opposed to getting "reduced up"? Why not just "reduced"?
Combined cycle cogeneration system. Gas turbines turn generators to produce electricity and the waste heat operates boilers and the exhaust steam is what is sent to the end users. I have been an Engineer for over 50 years and am at work right now at a hospital.
How does this steam end up in the case of heating , is there any condenser at the end of the line and where does this water from cooled steam go ?
Maybe i missed it in the video, but what happens after the heat is "used" and the steam condensades? Is it a closed system and the water is returned to the plants or does it end as waste water?
Almost half of NY electricity comes from Hydro-Québec, which is in Canada.
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.
wait is the voiceover guy the same one from History Channels How its Made?
As a Swede where we use hot water thru pipes in the street I would like to know what the advantages is with steam over hot water just under the boiling point?
Steam under pressure can be super heated resulting much more energy in the heat exchangers of the buildings heating systems.
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.
The only thing they never even touched on was the condensate. Does every building pump it back to the plant or are they just dumping it. And the plant is running on 100% make up water
"...What we _call_ a utility tunnel"?
Why "what we _call"?_ That's just their "loving term" for it; not the _official term?_
I am thinking of frostpunk while watching this.
Stayed in a NYC apartment that had steam heat. Was spring and the radiator wouldn't turn off. Main tenant told me to "just turn on the AC". Seriously... 😀
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?
Do they take back the return condensate from the buildings?
Each customer is required to first reduce the temperature of the condensate (which in many cases that heat is recovered and used to "pre-heat" hot water thereby reducing energy consumption). The water then goes into the sewage system. Each customer is then charged for the disposal as a percentage of the steam consumed.
Electricity is an app available?
Super interesting!
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 😮
In your country, you are using more water and more fuel because water has a higher latent heat content. Also, water has greater friction long the inner walls of the pipe as compared to steam. Unless your country is Iceland. Where geothermal energy is used those negatives are negligible.
World: 230V
US: 120V
World: Metric
US: Bananas
World: Hot Water
US: Steam
... well ...
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.
i feel like theres a new video on NYC Steam posted like 3 times a year by various channels.
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
Berlin is running on steam too. Not this building i am sitting in. But many many around me. It s called "Fernwärmenetz"
Nope Fernwärme is not steam but hot water and it's a closed system so no leaks and the water is running back to the provider.
1:30 "a lot of smoke coming out it" 😂
As a kid, I always wondered why there were no electricity poles in Manhattan. I get it now.
For some reason the graphic at 11:34 sent me, the idea of 24" steam mains connected by humongous pro press 90s is funny as hell
In Alberta we use Gas,wood, and if you live near the patch, oil. Also at 6:42 is that Rodney Dangerfield?
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.
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.
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.
Is all the condensate simply vented? Shouldn't it be captured to use as feed as is done on a ship|?
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 🤣
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.
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
Dude, in the beginning sounds like a relative of Michael Rappaport 😂
What do the steam stacks smell like? I'd have assumed they'd have no smell.
Mostly a myth. It depends on what the vapor is passing underneath the street before it exits the column. Typically it just "smells" like moist air and because its warmer than the surrounding air, it's traveling upward and you would never "smell" it anyway.
What is Steam hammer? Is that like water hammer? Maybe you should tell people how to purchase a bucket of steam in New York. Maybe at the steam store.
One of the sad things about using steam, is the fact that we don’t use the heat produced by boiling water into steam.. our energy is produced due to the fact that that water expands 600 times its volume when converted into a gas.. we use the expansion of the gasses, in he form of pressure, to spin turbines to create energy.. all the energy we put into heating the steam is wasted .. we burn millions of tons of coal and natural gas to heat up water so it will expand, then vent the steam into the atmosphere, where the heat exchanges into the cold air around it, dropping its temperature, which causes the steam to condense back into water, and end up in lakes, rivers and oceans
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.
955 MW equivalent is VERY impressive.
So all this water is used and what sent down the drain?
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.
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.
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.
They should definitely connect waste heat from power generation, waste incinerators, data centers etc. Also geothermal should be doable.
It’s wild comparing Britain in the Industrial Revolution to New York in 2025
Constant background sound track is not required and makes the video not worth watching!
NY is an outdoor factory. On-site amenities
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
but isn't that steam tunrs into water again?
like for how much tiime it stays as a steam
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?
6:45 - THANK YOU, however uncomfortable it was to remove it, for removing the corporate "steam facts" commercial PowerPoint from the video... Sorry you had to sit through that one. Oof.
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.
Yeah, too many people still weigh the costs and benefit of things. They haven't yet learned that we can finance utopia through inflation
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.
He's comparing natural gas to former fuels like coal and number 2/6 fuel oil.
here they use Hot water trough similar pipes trough out the city.
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
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.
21:28 when a person does that with their hands.. you know they're lying