Why New York Is Powered By Steam - NYC Revealed

this is a steam stack and they're dotted all over manhattan nowhere on earth are they more common in fact new york is one of the few cities in the world that relies on steam to heat its buildings including some of its tallest most iconic towers our customers are behind us all the skystray state building if you look the u.n is right up the river a little bit you have the chrysler building they get the scene directly from con edison i think steam's an old technology it works it's been around technology's coming up to make it more efficient this is our core business is to make reliable cheap steam for the largest city in the united states so philadelphia boston all those steam systems together don't even equal the size of this one [Music] this is the story of how steam shaped new york city [Music] [Music] it's horrendous yeah don't worry it's so ugly i hate the orange yeah the first thing i noticed was the steam really loud and a lot of smoke coming out of it well and i've definitely heard people that don't live here be like oh those things smell so gross and then i walk through it and i'm like does it am i am am i just used to this like it doesn't smell that bad like there are worse smells bright orange and white stripes steamed billowing out of dozens of feet above the city streets these stacks should stand out but for the average new yorker they're just part of everyday life so what are these mysterious pipes actually for i'm not sure you know i don't really pay attention i just go from point a to point b just to release underground like uh uh pressure right like gases underneath yeah like to release like i water vapor i mean by the smell of it [Music] the answer manhattan runs on steam 27 billion pounds of it per year in fact steam moves through vast networks of underground pipes providing the island's buildings with the energy they need for heating and cooling these pipes allow pressurized steam to escape directing it away from passers-by the steam system new york would look quite different the city's tallest buildings would need a separate space to store truckloads of coal they would also need chimneys spewing out clouds of soot high above the city this was manhattan before the introduction of steam [Music] before the dawn of the 19th century the wood burning fireplace served as the primary source of heat for most new yorkers later coal became the fuel of choice but coal was hard to transport and proved to be a cumbersome inconvenient way to heat a home but as the city grew it needed a more efficient and manageable energy source in 1876 experimental inventor and engineer bird sil holly of lockport new york stumbled upon a new way to heat his home steam [Music] this new source of heat was not just novel it was efficient soon he extended his system to heat the homes of his neighbors lockport new york now ran on steam by 1936 new york steam system was the largest in the country with 65 miles of main pipes and six steam generating plants serving 2500 buildings in 1954 gas and electric provider consolidated edison acquired the new york steam company and has been responsible for the city's steam ever since today steam's journey begins at one of the city's steam production facilities here machines more than 10 stories high generate more than 3 million pounds of steam per hour this station provides about 52 to 55 of all the steam in manhattan and it supplies all the electricity south of 36th street down at the tip of the battery you have 105 miles of piping that are underneath the streets you have all these plants that feed this 105 miles of pipework if you look on the northern fringe 96th street on the west side and all the way down to the tip of the battery and the full width of manhattan if you look at all the big customers that we have they could equal up to about 3.2 million customers or people that we supply steam to the majority of customers use steam for heat but it does serve other purposes heat hot water obvious air conditioning you mean you use steam to make air conditioning well there are different types of machines out there that take that steam and they can convert it into chilled water sterilization you can see how important that is in hospital and humidification you have a lot of laundromats too and that needs steam for steam cleaning the plant needs around 125 000 gallons of water per hour to provide the city with the steam it needs we need water for steam keep the water up become steep but we need to be pristine there can't be any minerals in that steam so we actually take new york city drinking water which is probably one of the cleanest drinking waters in the world and we purify it once the water is purified it is directed to a boiler mostly we burn gas here that gas comes out and there's a ball of fire inside this big box with a big boiler and that ball of fire is probably about 2500 to 3000 degrees and you have tubes on the inside surface of the big box or the big boiler and inside there you have water it's here that water becomes steam that steam leaves the boiler and goes through a network of piping to any one of con edison's customers three of con edison's six plants generate both steam and electricity through a process called cogeneration the steam generated from this plant goes into those pipes underground and it gets distributed throughout the city and they they go and they tap off and go to a customer and they feed into the basement of a building and from there it's metered and then it goes for whatever they need if they need heating they need cooling they need uh sterilization whatever they need for so this is where it starts [Music] so kind anderson brings district steam in the street and it comes down through this pipe so all of brookfield place all eight million square feet of retail office and the common area of the winter garden that you see in the uh main area it all gets fed from our central plant so it all comes in here goes up through these pipes over around here gets meted by khan edison they have their meters and then boom this is where we pay our bill from from these meters comes all the way back into this header on this side of things over here and from here we take it and we distribute it out to the buildings take 180 pound condensing then that gets reduced down to 60 then down to 15 and it's 15 pounds steam that the buildings are seeing and then from here we can distribute that and send it up a riser in a low pressure pipe and it goes out to the building the buildings don't see anything more than 15 pounds [Music] when you maintain a system this vast things happen and you have to maintain it so if there's a leak around a series of valves that steam is going to work its way up well in the event that that steam gets up you don't want it to spread out and that's where steam stacks come in you want to contain inside that stack so nobody gets hurt and then it buys time to get the materials and the labor together and go and fix it these stacks redirect vapor released through a manhole and even though they are each used temporarily they are all over manhattan steam looks like it's here to stay but there is room for improvement sustainability is a big word nowadays but we've been doing this for years this plant from 1926 to probably in the mid-60s burned coal we swapped over to cleaner fuels but that's our backup fuel we rarely run on that fuel our primary source of fuel is gas very clean methane that methane is a significant amount of times much cleaner burn than the fuel oil or the coal or the kerosene that has been burned in the past we're looking for electrification we're looking for carbon capture whatever carbon that's left from the emissions to capture that as we push further into the 21st century new york city will continue to move toward carbon-free energy sources but for now steam co-generated at the city's power plants remains a sustainable option [Music] we want to stay in business for another 140 years and we've been growing these last 140 and we're going to continue growing for another 140. [Music] you

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 305,932

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, NYC, NYC Revealed, new york, new york city, ny, city, city planning, urban planning, design, city design, curiositystream, curiosity stream, docuseries, documentary, docu, steam, steam heat, heating system, air conditioning, cooling, electricity, electrical grid

Id: sUq5nQXczEg

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2022