Cooling Toronto Using Lake Ontario

An anonymous reader writes "Air cooled by the frigid waters deep in Lake Ontario started bringing relief to buildings in downtown Toronto on Tuesday after the valves were symbolically opened on the multi-million-dollar project. The company says that they have the capacity to air condition 100 office buildings or 8,000 homes - the equivalent of 32 million square feet of building space. They note that the cooling system reduces energy usage, freeing up megawatts from the Ontario's electrical grid, minimizes ozone-depleting refrigerants and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide entering the air."

Comments

Just two questions

[cyclop]

(1). What will happen when the lake water will be warmed up? Ok,it will perhaps take a long time,but...

(2). How does the energy required for pumping / distributing the water and maintaining pipelines and machinery compares with electrical conditioneers?

Said that, it looks like a nice idea.

Re:Environmental effects

[L0C0loco]

What??? Water is its densest at a temperature of 4C. Cold water pumped out during the summer cooling months has a chance to be replenished during the next winter. As the winter ice melts and the melt water warms it begins to sink due to the relative increase in density as it approaches a temperature of 4C. So long as the winter cooling capacity of the lake exceeds the summer cooling needs of the city, this should be a sustainable practice. It is true that the thickness of the cold layer will thin during the summer pumping season, but it will thicken again during winter. Obviously, this pumping will cause the mean thickness to decrease - they just need to hope it doesn't thin too much. The problem with free lunches is that people eat too much, get fat, and die!