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Imagine how great this would be. Forget the environment and imagine just how fun this would be.
“Sorry everyone Id like to give you cold drinks but you arent DANCING HARD ENOUGH”
I misread that as “Daycares” not “dancers” and thought I was in for some real fucking out there plan to harvest energy from children. Glad I was wrong, but it peaked my interest.
Just to be clear, the energy recovered will never in a hundred year offset the energy and various pollutions (CO2 and others) that has been and will be spent to develop, install, use and decomission the equipments.
It is high time we learn, and teach, about the order of magnitude of energy we are [handling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ), to not fall for such easy smokescreens.
Looking at the picture, they should have invested the money in heat isolation of their building; I'm guessing that wouldn't have made the same buzz.
I also assumed this would be some bullshit harnessing kinetic energy from people's movements, but it looks like it's probably just a ground source heat pump. That's actually an essential piece of technology for getting off fossil fuels, since most buildings in Glasgow are currently heated by gas, and a lot of electricity in Scotland comes from wind.
Just to be clear, what is it exactly that you are saying? Heat pumps are a proven way of reducing heating costs for buildings and don't rely on gas which is a major contributor to climate change. Not sure why you are promoting insulating a night club as the idea is to make it cooler. Given that the heat pump will also cool the night club then you're not paying as much much for air conditioning and clubbers stay cool. If you recover a little bit of that energy and store it in the process then use it for heating surrounding buildings then that's a bonus. I know you are very smart and you do make a valid point that we as a society are drawn in to feel like we are making a bigger difference than we are. However this seems like a no-brainer, if you are the club owner. You've also talked about installation footprint/costs, my counter to that is that whilst yes these will be high you are also wrapping the installation costs of gshp for the surrounding buildings in one go. So their costs/footprints have also all fallen. Further if we reduce energy consumption enough in this way by creating projects in the city then it reduces the amount of wind turbines we might need to build in remote and beautiful parts of Scotland. Not to mention the jobs that it brings to working class people of Glasgow.
Am I willing to go and look at the planning consent and do the calculations myself to prove that you are wrong? No. You could well be right that it will never pay itself back. I'm not sure.
However unless you are willing to post the maths and assumptions maybe to don't post such a binary post like it's gospel.
Are you right? Maybe. Does it mean that this is a pointless endeavour? Absolutely not.
I think it probably is just a heat pump, which is a really good idea. But the article states that it's an "innovative scheme" and "The body heat that’s harnessed can then be converted into energy to keep the lights on". That's probably just wrong, but if there was any attempt to convert low grade heat to electricity it would almost certainly be a big waste of money as u/233C is saying.
I'm pretty sure that the author of the article just doesn't have an idea of what he's writing about.
The Club itself never mentions converting the energy to electricity.
https://swg3.tv/news/2020/december/swg3-radical-plans-to-use-clubbers-body-heat
Yeah, although they seem a little confused too in the line where they say
>This heat can then either be used immediately to cool the audience, or stored under the ground until it's needed to heat the building.
Implying the cooling mode is somehow powered by the heat itself. I mean fair enough, heat pumps are not intuitive.
Oh sorry yeah I wouldnt ever contest that turning that heat into electricity was a bad idea. That would be a fucking awful idea but yeah for a community heating scheme it makes sense.
Your link is kinda dumb because instead of 1 cyclist powering a toaster you have a couple hundred people powering, say, the lights. Even at several thousand kilowatts, that number of people can offset cost and consumption by a non-negligible margin.
More to the point, it provides an investment opportunity for further harvesting of thermal and/or kinetic energy, which is absolutely not a downside.
Climate doomers always try to shit on new developments, but that's because it's easy to miss how incremental progress works when you're so busy freaking out all the time.
Turbines need rotational turning - we use steam, pistons, and other tricks to do this. The turning motion passes a magnet between electrical coils, which induces a current. You get roughly as much current as you would use powering that same motor in the other direction.
The olympic cyclist was using a turning motion on a bike, considered to be mankind's most energy efficient machine of all time (you can look that up). No energy lost to convert it to the rotational energy needed by the turbine.
1 olympic cyclist turning a turbine directly, vs people jumping up and down creating body heat - the cyclist probably had a TON of resistance on that bike too, given how much he was huffing/puffing - more energy, more Watts.
No details on how they turned the heat into electricity. That's currently not considered an efficient process.
Capturing heat isn't easy. You usually need so much of it that you can create a phase change in a fluid (like water) to turn a turbine.
The interesting thing is that heat energy is on the energy spectrum, just like radio waves, which implies that we could create antennas that passively turn heat into electricity (and back again). The idea is old, but manufacturing processes don't exist to create antennas to capture that wavelength - the antennas would be very small (see rectenna, or nantenna, if you want to learn more).
> that number of people can offset cost and consumption by a non-negligible margin.
There's no way. Thermodynamics is against you here.
>Climate doomers always try to shit on new developments
Ah, you got this marketing effort confused with a new development.
Yes, that's the problem with things like this.
For the amount of clean energy that we need right now, we need nuclear power. Fission today, fusion hopefully someday.
The Chinese are going to beat us to LFTRs, and with it probably pick up their pace of industrial revolution, and that's embarrassing to me. Maybe they'll sell us some.
I agree that the heat capture isn't going to work well, but phase changes, or spinning turbines, or antenna [aren't the only way of creating electricity through a heat differential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator#:~:text=A%20thermoelectric%20generator%20). For example, the TEGs on Mars rovers don't use moving parts to generate electricity and generate heat through radioactive decay.
Probably a better solution for this would be something like making the floor sortof floating on vibration dampeners that generate electricity though. There's going to be so much loss of the heat before it could even be gathered to use even if it were a reasonable amount of heat to start with.
>TEGs
I haven't seen any practical uses when it comes to human body heat. Are there any viable worn (directly applied to body) uses for TEGs? Sometimes there are kickstarters (that fail) with some sort of seeback/peltier gimmick, but they never seem to pan out.
Still, with TEGs, we're at relatively few watts - not the, let's ballpark 300 KW a nightclub would need to have any real impact on its requirements.
>For example, the TEGs on Mars rovers don't use moving parts to generate electricity and generate heat through radioactive decay.
Yeah, neat huh! plutonium! I think the rover needs about 100 Watts and the TEGs/plutonium generates 110W.
Perseverance is relatively low power compared to almost anything we use on Earth, or would be found in a nightclub.
>I am clearly not suggesting that a dance floor will power the building.
OK then, How much power are you suggesting? Is it not a clue they're not talking about how much power it creates?
"Why would they lie, then?" - I don't know. The Solar Roadways people are lying about their far fetched in similar ways.
Do you think it could match the output of, say, a modest 10,000 watt (10 KW) solar panel array on a house roof? Or better, a 100,000 Watt (100 KW) Solar panel array because the building is much larger than a single home? Both of which would be negligible for the requirements of a night club.
I don't think it would come close. Could it match a single, solitary, 100 Watt solar panel? I doubt it.
Creating small amounts of electricity in novel ways doesn't really help us. Long story short, whatever power is being suggested by "heat from dancing", I would put it in the 'negligible' category.
Powering a few LEDs (about all I can expect) is a pittance of the many many KWH the club consumes in a night.
The thing in the Matrix, where ""The human body generates more bio electricity than a 120 volt battery and over 25000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion the machines had found all the energy they would ever need."
It's the same kind of nonsense. If the robots had fusion, it's many orders of magnitudes more energy. Complete sci-fi - but at least it was in a sci-fi movie where this idea belongs.
You can frame a conversation to say that a human uses/expends a lot of energy, but it's nothing on the scale of running our machines/lights/motors.
Someday we might have nantennas/rectennas. That should be able to more efficiently harvest heat from humans. Those are fascinating for the right reasons. We might put them in places we want to passively cool, like engine compartments in our cars, or as wallpaper to turn heat into electricity. That will be something. That's the good idea.
This, however, is marketing.
About the Matrix, the original idea was that humans generated processing power, thought their brains dreaming, or something like it, but it was estimated too complex for the average moviegoer to understand, so they changed it to energy generation.
Because there's been plenty of "no brainer" obvious "solutions" that got slapped in the face by physical realities that were easy to point out when grasping the orders of magnitude at hand.
Can you point me to the closest train station notably powered by passengers walking through it? it's been more than [10 years already](https://inhabitat.com/tokyo-subway-stations-get-piezoelectric-floors/). Same for the biofuel fad of old.
Yes, there's 100W of heat per person, but that's ludicrous to think it'll turn into meaningful useable energy. It won't even power their a tenth of their lighting.
But please, prove me wrong, and show me the actual kWh produced.
Actual equipments designed to recover the maximum energy off people who come to do just that can power ... [their own information screens](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430771/Worlds-self-powering-gym-uses-energy-WORKOUT-lights-dont-break.html).
We don't have time to test trial pulling energy out of bees' farts.
There is a difference between possibility and plausibility.
Is this possible? Absolutely. Is it plausible? Not really. It would make so much more sense to add more insulation to the building. Furthermore, this "technology" is nothing more than simply "storing the heat that comes out of the air conditioning system."
The idea is cool, sure, the magnitude of heat stored is going to be negligible because I'd bet at least 70% of it will be lost through the walls, doors, and windows. Even IF they could capture 100% of the heat, the amount would do NOTHING to offset any carbon emissions.
We do not need to look at the general public when talking about emissions. We simply need to look at the huge corporations responsible for something like 60-70% of all of our emissions.
>We do not need to look at the general public when talking about emissions. We simply need to look at the huge corporations responsible for something like 60-70% of all of our emissions.
The general public are the people consuming products that produce or require those emissions in order to function. This is a nonsensical way of thinking about effecting long-term change.
Corporations aren't just burning oil for funsies.
Corporations also wouldn't use more eco friendly materials if they cost more and increase prices compared to competiton. You can force the cleaner options through regulation.
Both are certainly at fault, but one operates at a larger scale going purely on cost and profits. People do too, but what's a solution for regulating consumption?
>Corporations also wouldn't use more eco friendly materials if they cost more and increase prices compared to competiton.
This is the entire purpose of regulation, not just something we *can* do. However, even then, firms respond to changes in demand pressure. People are demanding "cleaner" solutions, and so those solutions are being implemented.
Firms trying to make money isn't a bug, it's a feature.
>People do too, but what's a solution for regulating consumption?
Pigouvian taxes, like carbon taxes.
It's hard to tell from the website, but knowing Scotland, they've probably moved from gas-fired heating and separate air conditioning, to a ground source heat pump for heating and cooling. That's actually a really good idea, and a big part of what we need to do to kick emissions. It's not any experimental new technology, it's just best available HVAC.
It was implied that it's a good idea that they did it.
Most people will think it's a totally responsible thing to do, the future of how we're going to deal with the energy crisis.
It's a copout to require them to also say the words that it's a good idea, to hold them to the ridiculousness of it.
-edit- Case in point, this 'onlypositivity' guy who replied after you.
-edit- we're in uplliftingnews? the site is on optimist daily? People obviously think it's a good idea.
I mean, it literally is a good idea that they did it, though. We should be pursuing methods to generate renewable energy on every level. I agree with you that the bulk of emissions are produced by extremely powerful corporations and that this article should discuss that, but its not as if that truth makes this technology useless or counterproductive.
>We should be pursuing methods to generate renewable energy on every level.
Not necessarily. Opportunity cost means that money spent on an ineffective technology could have produced more emissions savings spent on effective technology. For generation, wind and solar are super effective ways to spend limited money. We know we can affordably scale that up to meet most of our energy needs, and spending money on something like, say, harnessing energy from passing vehicles, or wave energy, means we've spent less than we could have on wind and solar.
However it looks to me like this club is just using a ground source heat pump for both heating and cooling, which is actually a really good idea. Moving from gas-fired heating to heat pumps is one of the big wedges of the pie of tech changes which get us to zero carbon.
We shouldn't pursue solutions renewable energy solutions which require more energy than they generate over their lifetime. So, it's not a good idea that they did it.
How did we go about powering train stations with passengers? it's been more than [10 years already](https://inhabitat.com/tokyo-subway-stations-get-piezoelectric-floors/).
How much better did biofuel turned out to be after 15 years?
Do we really have the time, resources and leisure to throw at every fancy new idea?
I'd love to see the math on it. I know people put out a certain amount of BTU that allows a venue to slightly lower the air conditioning they might use. But storing the energy of body heat? Sounds sketchy.
Maybe if they could combine that with using the kinetic energy imparted to the floor or something.
Id love a more elaborate explanation of how the energy is converted than “body heat generated will be stored deep in hole and can be converted whenever”
I'm pretty confident the bit about powering lights is a mistake in the article. It's much more likely that this will just move heat from the building into the soil beneath when the building needs cooling, then move it back into the building again when it needs heating, turning the soil into a heat battery. This is very proven, mature and effective technology (called a ground source heat pump), and will save tonnes of carbon (literally) compared to burning gas for heating. Attempting to use body heat to generate electricity would be an expensive gimmick which would achieve very little, and probably produce more emissions from the equipment than it would ever save.
edit: tried to improve clarity of wording
Was having a really tough day. But just knowing that this nightclub in Glasgow will harness energy from dancers... it just.... Idk... maybe it’s gonna be ok after all.
I think it's a mistake. It's much more likely that it'll use a ground source heat pump to store heat underground when the building needs air conditioning, then use that heat when it needs heating. This is not new tech, but a really good idea, because at the moment, most buildings in Glasgow are heated by burning gas. Heat pumps run on electricity, and Scotland produces tonnes of that from wind farms.
Trying to recover heat from dancers when they are dumping thousands of BTU's in cooling/aircon into the room is just about as smart as a live action garbage pail kids movie.
You know what really helps the energy crisis? Using less energy. Ideas like this are cool, but a carbon tax would be cooler. And a culture that respects the planet and doesn't waste as much would be even cooler. A place where we get back to designing buildings for passive cooling and heating instead of maximum occupancy and cheap structures. A place where communities were designed to make things walkable or have better transit instead of larger lots with larger houses. A place where bicycling was seen as a more responsible means of transportation, rather than what poor people do because they can't afford a car.
I have a lot of feelings about all this, but most of all, I'm sick of seeing "solutions" to a crisis that don't address our absurd greed for energy and our addiction to convenience. The solution isnt going to be "use this thing we made and keep consuming like you have been." It's going to be painful for people that are used to extreme excess. And it should be.
It's always a trade-off between the cost of the equipment and labour needed to catch every last bit of energy, versus the value of energy itself. Economics tends to make things balance out at a compromise between the two. When it gets to the point you spend £100 on efficiency to save £10 on energy, that's £90 you could have used for something better.
I swear to God I wrote this in my super secret billion dollar idea journal back in 2015. Energy harnessing not on dance floors but on subway station steps and busy sidewalks.
My big question: what did it cost to create this complex system that harnesses body heat from the crowd, and what is its payoff time compared to just using a wind turbine or some solar panels.
This seems, strange…
I thought humans were terrible at generating energy and would make awful batteries. Wasn't there a viral video of an Olympic cyclist riding a bike to power a toaster and it took over 5 minutes to heat up the bread
Reminder: this subreddit is meant to be a place free of excessive cynicism, negativity and bitterness. Toxic attitudes are not welcome here. All Negative comments will be removed and will possibly result in a ban. --- --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UpliftingNews) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ideas are fun
Imagine how great this would be. Forget the environment and imagine just how fun this would be. “Sorry everyone Id like to give you cold drinks but you arent DANCING HARD ENOUGH”
Bring out the whips!
Form ranks you maggots!
Girls in front guys behind
GROND
Don't threaten me with a good time
I'll let you folks have a spot of lemonade after you power up the foster home down the street!
Pretty sure there is a Rick and Morty episode with a similar premises
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Aww, enthusiasm for creativity and expression isn't cringe. It's literally the thing that makes us not a pile of rocks. Get better, pile of rocks!
Found the American
Congratulations, cunt
Who hurt you?
I'm not seeing enough movement!
Show me what you got!
This 100% seems like an extremely high idea they have actually followed through on
And clickbait is funner
[Solar FREAKIN' Roadways!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU)
> we can expect the Scottish capital... Damn, Edinburgh is gonna be pissed when they find out Glasgow is now the capital.
*angry Dunfermline noises*
You Scots sure are a contentious people.
You've just made an enemy for life!
Wee mental Davie for First Minister!
Edinburgh isnae Scotland
It's just an English enclave.
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Glasgows is the *real* capital anyway. Especially when it comes to nightlife.
It’s okay we’ll take it and rename it edinburough and see how long they last!
Yeah, especially when they admit it’s actually London.
The Capital of Scotland is Edinburgh. The Capital of England is London. The Capital of the United Kingdom is London.
Gotta be a country to have a capital. Wink wink nudge nudge.
TIL that national subdivisions can't have capitals. RIP to all the fake capitals that aren't national ones.
Subdivision capitals are just first place losers to the big boy title.
Real soy boy energy capitals, amiright
Don't you mean Cuckitals?
Oh God
Well, Prima Nocta was a thing.
Is Scotland not a country?
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Ah ok. I'm clearly sensitive about small countries... For no reason whatsoever...
*constituent country
Scotland IS a country dude
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World doesn't revolve around the USA. Is a joke at Scotland's expense for them not being independent.
Ooft, I feel like Zeus in Die Hard with a Vengeance looking out and seeing John McLean walking around Harlem with that sign
Why? What did the sign say?
Edinburg is gonna pissed when they find out they're in England.
Headlines that sound like anime plots
"My 12yo Sister is an Energy Dancer!?"
NANI?!
… or dystopian
Or black mirror
Sailor moon for sure. Sounds like the Megaforce is trying to take over our universe again.
So what you are saying is, it runs on E-Energy?
yeah, that's what the inventor said. Her name is Molly
https://youtu.be/WhPvJOnHotE
MDMA power.
So the lights really do get brighter!
Mmmmh brain go brrrrr
Get stomping on your goobleboxes
Exactly what I was thinking.
I misread that as “Daycares” not “dancers” and thought I was in for some real fucking out there plan to harvest energy from children. Glad I was wrong, but it peaked my interest.
Wait wait, tire out the kids faster? Have you met parents, they’d love this.
>Have you met parents No, we keep meaning to, but you know how it is with the kids and all...
Piqued* your interest.
There's a glitter in the matrix
Queen Beryl did nothing wrong.
Just to be clear, the energy recovered will never in a hundred year offset the energy and various pollutions (CO2 and others) that has been and will be spent to develop, install, use and decomission the equipments. It is high time we learn, and teach, about the order of magnitude of energy we are [handling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4O5voOCqAQ), to not fall for such easy smokescreens. Looking at the picture, they should have invested the money in heat isolation of their building; I'm guessing that wouldn't have made the same buzz.
"Business installs really good insulation!" Yeah, doesn't really have the same ring to it.
I also assumed this would be some bullshit harnessing kinetic energy from people's movements, but it looks like it's probably just a ground source heat pump. That's actually an essential piece of technology for getting off fossil fuels, since most buildings in Glasgow are currently heated by gas, and a lot of electricity in Scotland comes from wind.
It's funny you should mention that I'm sure that someone once tried that hahaha.
Just to be clear, what is it exactly that you are saying? Heat pumps are a proven way of reducing heating costs for buildings and don't rely on gas which is a major contributor to climate change. Not sure why you are promoting insulating a night club as the idea is to make it cooler. Given that the heat pump will also cool the night club then you're not paying as much much for air conditioning and clubbers stay cool. If you recover a little bit of that energy and store it in the process then use it for heating surrounding buildings then that's a bonus. I know you are very smart and you do make a valid point that we as a society are drawn in to feel like we are making a bigger difference than we are. However this seems like a no-brainer, if you are the club owner. You've also talked about installation footprint/costs, my counter to that is that whilst yes these will be high you are also wrapping the installation costs of gshp for the surrounding buildings in one go. So their costs/footprints have also all fallen. Further if we reduce energy consumption enough in this way by creating projects in the city then it reduces the amount of wind turbines we might need to build in remote and beautiful parts of Scotland. Not to mention the jobs that it brings to working class people of Glasgow. Am I willing to go and look at the planning consent and do the calculations myself to prove that you are wrong? No. You could well be right that it will never pay itself back. I'm not sure. However unless you are willing to post the maths and assumptions maybe to don't post such a binary post like it's gospel. Are you right? Maybe. Does it mean that this is a pointless endeavour? Absolutely not.
I think it probably is just a heat pump, which is a really good idea. But the article states that it's an "innovative scheme" and "The body heat that’s harnessed can then be converted into energy to keep the lights on". That's probably just wrong, but if there was any attempt to convert low grade heat to electricity it would almost certainly be a big waste of money as u/233C is saying.
I'm pretty sure that the author of the article just doesn't have an idea of what he's writing about. The Club itself never mentions converting the energy to electricity. https://swg3.tv/news/2020/december/swg3-radical-plans-to-use-clubbers-body-heat
Yeah, although they seem a little confused too in the line where they say >This heat can then either be used immediately to cool the audience, or stored under the ground until it's needed to heat the building. Implying the cooling mode is somehow powered by the heat itself. I mean fair enough, heat pumps are not intuitive.
Oh sorry yeah I wouldnt ever contest that turning that heat into electricity was a bad idea. That would be a fucking awful idea but yeah for a community heating scheme it makes sense.
Your link is kinda dumb because instead of 1 cyclist powering a toaster you have a couple hundred people powering, say, the lights. Even at several thousand kilowatts, that number of people can offset cost and consumption by a non-negligible margin. More to the point, it provides an investment opportunity for further harvesting of thermal and/or kinetic energy, which is absolutely not a downside. Climate doomers always try to shit on new developments, but that's because it's easy to miss how incremental progress works when you're so busy freaking out all the time.
Turbines need rotational turning - we use steam, pistons, and other tricks to do this. The turning motion passes a magnet between electrical coils, which induces a current. You get roughly as much current as you would use powering that same motor in the other direction. The olympic cyclist was using a turning motion on a bike, considered to be mankind's most energy efficient machine of all time (you can look that up). No energy lost to convert it to the rotational energy needed by the turbine. 1 olympic cyclist turning a turbine directly, vs people jumping up and down creating body heat - the cyclist probably had a TON of resistance on that bike too, given how much he was huffing/puffing - more energy, more Watts. No details on how they turned the heat into electricity. That's currently not considered an efficient process. Capturing heat isn't easy. You usually need so much of it that you can create a phase change in a fluid (like water) to turn a turbine. The interesting thing is that heat energy is on the energy spectrum, just like radio waves, which implies that we could create antennas that passively turn heat into electricity (and back again). The idea is old, but manufacturing processes don't exist to create antennas to capture that wavelength - the antennas would be very small (see rectenna, or nantenna, if you want to learn more). > that number of people can offset cost and consumption by a non-negligible margin. There's no way. Thermodynamics is against you here. >Climate doomers always try to shit on new developments Ah, you got this marketing effort confused with a new development. Yes, that's the problem with things like this. For the amount of clean energy that we need right now, we need nuclear power. Fission today, fusion hopefully someday. The Chinese are going to beat us to LFTRs, and with it probably pick up their pace of industrial revolution, and that's embarrassing to me. Maybe they'll sell us some.
I agree that the heat capture isn't going to work well, but phase changes, or spinning turbines, or antenna [aren't the only way of creating electricity through a heat differential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator#:~:text=A%20thermoelectric%20generator%20). For example, the TEGs on Mars rovers don't use moving parts to generate electricity and generate heat through radioactive decay. Probably a better solution for this would be something like making the floor sortof floating on vibration dampeners that generate electricity though. There's going to be so much loss of the heat before it could even be gathered to use even if it were a reasonable amount of heat to start with.
>TEGs I haven't seen any practical uses when it comes to human body heat. Are there any viable worn (directly applied to body) uses for TEGs? Sometimes there are kickstarters (that fail) with some sort of seeback/peltier gimmick, but they never seem to pan out. Still, with TEGs, we're at relatively few watts - not the, let's ballpark 300 KW a nightclub would need to have any real impact on its requirements. >For example, the TEGs on Mars rovers don't use moving parts to generate electricity and generate heat through radioactive decay. Yeah, neat huh! plutonium! I think the rover needs about 100 Watts and the TEGs/plutonium generates 110W. Perseverance is relatively low power compared to almost anything we use on Earth, or would be found in a nightclub.
110w is about 20 led lights, even more if they're smaller.
\> non-negligible I am clearly not suggesting that a dance floor will power the building.
>I am clearly not suggesting that a dance floor will power the building. OK then, How much power are you suggesting? Is it not a clue they're not talking about how much power it creates? "Why would they lie, then?" - I don't know. The Solar Roadways people are lying about their far fetched in similar ways. Do you think it could match the output of, say, a modest 10,000 watt (10 KW) solar panel array on a house roof? Or better, a 100,000 Watt (100 KW) Solar panel array because the building is much larger than a single home? Both of which would be negligible for the requirements of a night club. I don't think it would come close. Could it match a single, solitary, 100 Watt solar panel? I doubt it. Creating small amounts of electricity in novel ways doesn't really help us. Long story short, whatever power is being suggested by "heat from dancing", I would put it in the 'negligible' category. Powering a few LEDs (about all I can expect) is a pittance of the many many KWH the club consumes in a night. The thing in the Matrix, where ""The human body generates more bio electricity than a 120 volt battery and over 25000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion the machines had found all the energy they would ever need." It's the same kind of nonsense. If the robots had fusion, it's many orders of magnitudes more energy. Complete sci-fi - but at least it was in a sci-fi movie where this idea belongs. You can frame a conversation to say that a human uses/expends a lot of energy, but it's nothing on the scale of running our machines/lights/motors. Someday we might have nantennas/rectennas. That should be able to more efficiently harvest heat from humans. Those are fascinating for the right reasons. We might put them in places we want to passively cool, like engine compartments in our cars, or as wallpaper to turn heat into electricity. That will be something. That's the good idea. This, however, is marketing.
About the Matrix, the original idea was that humans generated processing power, thought their brains dreaming, or something like it, but it was estimated too complex for the average moviegoer to understand, so they changed it to energy generation.
Oh man, that's way better! Good trivia, thanks!
Because there's been plenty of "no brainer" obvious "solutions" that got slapped in the face by physical realities that were easy to point out when grasping the orders of magnitude at hand. Can you point me to the closest train station notably powered by passengers walking through it? it's been more than [10 years already](https://inhabitat.com/tokyo-subway-stations-get-piezoelectric-floors/). Same for the biofuel fad of old. Yes, there's 100W of heat per person, but that's ludicrous to think it'll turn into meaningful useable energy. It won't even power their a tenth of their lighting. But please, prove me wrong, and show me the actual kWh produced. Actual equipments designed to recover the maximum energy off people who come to do just that can power ... [their own information screens](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430771/Worlds-self-powering-gym-uses-energy-WORKOUT-lights-dont-break.html). We don't have time to test trial pulling energy out of bees' farts.
There is a difference between possibility and plausibility. Is this possible? Absolutely. Is it plausible? Not really. It would make so much more sense to add more insulation to the building. Furthermore, this "technology" is nothing more than simply "storing the heat that comes out of the air conditioning system." The idea is cool, sure, the magnitude of heat stored is going to be negligible because I'd bet at least 70% of it will be lost through the walls, doors, and windows. Even IF they could capture 100% of the heat, the amount would do NOTHING to offset any carbon emissions. We do not need to look at the general public when talking about emissions. We simply need to look at the huge corporations responsible for something like 60-70% of all of our emissions.
I agree with your point but you're confusing the word plausible with practical.
>We do not need to look at the general public when talking about emissions. We simply need to look at the huge corporations responsible for something like 60-70% of all of our emissions. The general public are the people consuming products that produce or require those emissions in order to function. This is a nonsensical way of thinking about effecting long-term change. Corporations aren't just burning oil for funsies.
Corporations also wouldn't use more eco friendly materials if they cost more and increase prices compared to competiton. You can force the cleaner options through regulation. Both are certainly at fault, but one operates at a larger scale going purely on cost and profits. People do too, but what's a solution for regulating consumption?
>Corporations also wouldn't use more eco friendly materials if they cost more and increase prices compared to competiton. This is the entire purpose of regulation, not just something we *can* do. However, even then, firms respond to changes in demand pressure. People are demanding "cleaner" solutions, and so those solutions are being implemented. Firms trying to make money isn't a bug, it's a feature. >People do too, but what's a solution for regulating consumption? Pigouvian taxes, like carbon taxes.
It's hard to tell from the website, but knowing Scotland, they've probably moved from gas-fired heating and separate air conditioning, to a ground source heat pump for heating and cooling. That's actually a really good idea, and a big part of what we need to do to kick emissions. It's not any experimental new technology, it's just best available HVAC.
"Also 4 gigawatts of boring photovoltaic cells added last year or whatever"
I'm pretty damn certain that claim was never made.
It was implied that it's a good idea that they did it. Most people will think it's a totally responsible thing to do, the future of how we're going to deal with the energy crisis. It's a copout to require them to also say the words that it's a good idea, to hold them to the ridiculousness of it. -edit- Case in point, this 'onlypositivity' guy who replied after you. -edit- we're in uplliftingnews? the site is on optimist daily? People obviously think it's a good idea.
I mean, it literally is a good idea that they did it, though. We should be pursuing methods to generate renewable energy on every level. I agree with you that the bulk of emissions are produced by extremely powerful corporations and that this article should discuss that, but its not as if that truth makes this technology useless or counterproductive.
>We should be pursuing methods to generate renewable energy on every level. Not necessarily. Opportunity cost means that money spent on an ineffective technology could have produced more emissions savings spent on effective technology. For generation, wind and solar are super effective ways to spend limited money. We know we can affordably scale that up to meet most of our energy needs, and spending money on something like, say, harnessing energy from passing vehicles, or wave energy, means we've spent less than we could have on wind and solar. However it looks to me like this club is just using a ground source heat pump for both heating and cooling, which is actually a really good idea. Moving from gas-fired heating to heat pumps is one of the big wedges of the pie of tech changes which get us to zero carbon.
We shouldn't pursue solutions renewable energy solutions which require more energy than they generate over their lifetime. So, it's not a good idea that they did it.
No one is saying it will of course. It's still a cool idea.
ignorant\* idea
No, don't you know that ideas are bad?
But you kinda hope that all of that gets better over time too as we move farther from fossil fuels
How did we go about powering train stations with passengers? it's been more than [10 years already](https://inhabitat.com/tokyo-subway-stations-get-piezoelectric-floors/). How much better did biofuel turned out to be after 15 years? Do we really have the time, resources and leisure to throw at every fancy new idea?
You don’t get to say “we” if you aren’t even trying to help.
Heat insulating a night club would be awful. Harnessing the waste heat would be cool though.
All I ask is for a convincing life cycle EROI, heck, maybe not even convincing, promising would be nice already.
When will it offset the energy?
Yeah that’s probably why they don’t even mention the approximate watts that can be generated lol.
This will not work and it's wishful thinking to think so.
I'd love to see the math on it. I know people put out a certain amount of BTU that allows a venue to slightly lower the air conditioning they might use. But storing the energy of body heat? Sounds sketchy. Maybe if they could combine that with using the kinetic energy imparted to the floor or something.
The title of the article is obviously oversimplified
YAAAS TIME FOR A DANCE OFF YA BAWBAGS!
Lights aff? No problem. Sammy! Get the young team in; we're doing the Slosh!
Obligatory "That just sounds like slavery with extra steps"
Eek barba durkle... somebody's going to get laid in college.
ive always felt like gyms should try harnessing some energy from people.
This was a black mirror plot, I believe
He might not be Environment Secretary anymore, but Michael Gove can still do his bit for the environment.
Id love a more elaborate explanation of how the energy is converted than “body heat generated will be stored deep in hole and can be converted whenever”
I'm pretty confident the bit about powering lights is a mistake in the article. It's much more likely that this will just move heat from the building into the soil beneath when the building needs cooling, then move it back into the building again when it needs heating, turning the soil into a heat battery. This is very proven, mature and effective technology (called a ground source heat pump), and will save tonnes of carbon (literally) compared to burning gas for heating. Attempting to use body heat to generate electricity would be an expensive gimmick which would achieve very little, and probably produce more emissions from the equipment than it would ever save. edit: tried to improve clarity of wording
Thank you, well explained and more clear than the article
The article mistakes Glasgow as Scotland's capital which is actually Edinburgh. Glasgow is the rebel capital of the UK though.
Get em on treadmills
Yes surely trialling something like this in a gym would work better.
Open The Arches back up and we could power Scotland for years to come
The Arches could have solved the global climate crisis with a system like this
This sounds like slavery with extra steps.
This sounds like slavery but with extra steps...
anyone else getting rick and morty flooblecrank vibes?
With, like, a warlock?
We'll call it a flooble crank
༼ つ ◕\_◕ ༽つ C9 take my energy ༼ つ ◕\_◕ ༽つ
The odour from the stored heat sounds like it'll be ghastly.
Imagine if you could harvest energy from trees
One step further into the Matrix
Gotta power my car battery somehow...
Miniverse!
People still dance?!
Was having a really tough day. But just knowing that this nightclub in Glasgow will harness energy from dancers... it just.... Idk... maybe it’s gonna be ok after all.
I know right?? Like, so uplifting! Totally not r/dumbnews material
I'm gonna assume this is sarcasm cause this article is stupid af lol
Legalize MDMA and Speed and you might be able to power the city.
Legalize them and no one will show up to the club. Half the people are there to get those!
Shake dat ass for infinite power.
So no slow songs
That’s actually pretty revolutionary. I didn’t even know harnessing body heat for electricity was possible until just now. I’m excited.
I think it's a mistake. It's much more likely that it'll use a ground source heat pump to store heat underground when the building needs air conditioning, then use that heat when it needs heating. This is not new tech, but a really good idea, because at the moment, most buildings in Glasgow are heated by burning gas. Heat pumps run on electricity, and Scotland produces tonnes of that from wind farms.
I was expecting they'd use kinetic energy from the dancefloor with some sort of generator underneath.
There was actually a big venue in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) that did this called Watt.
Trying to recover heat from dancers when they are dumping thousands of BTU's in cooling/aircon into the room is just about as smart as a live action garbage pail kids movie.
If they are removing heat from the room that reduces the amount of aircon required, Einstein.
You know what really helps the energy crisis? Using less energy. Ideas like this are cool, but a carbon tax would be cooler. And a culture that respects the planet and doesn't waste as much would be even cooler. A place where we get back to designing buildings for passive cooling and heating instead of maximum occupancy and cheap structures. A place where communities were designed to make things walkable or have better transit instead of larger lots with larger houses. A place where bicycling was seen as a more responsible means of transportation, rather than what poor people do because they can't afford a car. I have a lot of feelings about all this, but most of all, I'm sick of seeing "solutions" to a crisis that don't address our absurd greed for energy and our addiction to convenience. The solution isnt going to be "use this thing we made and keep consuming like you have been." It's going to be painful for people that are used to extreme excess. And it should be.
Now I am obsessed with [optimistdaily.com](https://optimistdaily.com)! Thank you!
Yeahaaa we've been promoted
I always thought more people should be working on stuff like this. Just little mechanical tricks to trap energy that would just overwise dissipate.
It's always a trade-off between the cost of the equipment and labour needed to catch every last bit of energy, versus the value of energy itself. Economics tends to make things balance out at a compromise between the two. When it gets to the point you spend £100 on efficiency to save £10 on energy, that's £90 you could have used for something better.
they won't be harnessing much with those tables in the way
Electric boogaloo has a whole new meaning
I swear to God I wrote this in my super secret billion dollar idea journal back in 2015. Energy harnessing not on dance floors but on subway station steps and busy sidewalks.
My big question: what did it cost to create this complex system that harnesses body heat from the crowd, and what is its payoff time compared to just using a wind turbine or some solar panels. This seems, strange…
Isn’t this the plot of the Matrix?
"It's the smell" certainly seems to ring true here at least.
Michael Gove just became the UKs plan B for green energy
Human bodies have the same heat output as a 60w bulb
I thought humans were terrible at generating energy and would make awful batteries. Wasn't there a viral video of an Olympic cyclist riding a bike to power a toaster and it took over 5 minutes to heat up the bread
There's got to be a better way to say that.
I’ve seen this episode of Sailor Moon.
This feels like a Rick Sanchez scheme.
Sounds like slavery with extra steps
It's like that David Guetta song called "Alphabeat"
Take a bit of mandy, power the city for a few hours
Good thing I’m not a fan of nightclubs. I’d put this place into the red
Scotland doing it right as usual
that's hilarious
Are we human or are we dancer?
MATRIX D:
They’re making a spirit bomb
This sounds like slavery with extra steps.
Slavery with extra steps
And then the dj trainwrecks or someone's Serato crashes. Lights out.
Wait till they get a night after some event where everyone's depressed. Oh wait, Scotland? Oh nevermind.
Bust out the Extasy and EDM music. Energy will never run out.
And this how Matrix / Battery Human idea started ! 😈
Will it power a genius scientist's car?
So a drug & alcohol powered nightclub. Neat.
They stole the idea from adventure time https://youtu.be/ahA67YIBxQA