Charles Talleyrand <kitplane01@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> With current technology, and without enclosing the city,
>> we don't have that much energy. Which assumption do
>> you want to break?
>
>Is that really true. If I have a couple of hundred megawatts and I
>just want to heat a few square miles, that should be doable.
>
>Most of the driveway snow melters I've seen are set at 50 watts/square
>foot. And that's an intermittent setting just used to melt snow, so a
>continuous heater should use less energy.
>
>50 watts/square foot is 1.3 gigawatts/square mile.
And a decently built up square mile can easily have 10,000 people (or
25,000 for NYC, 65,000 for Manhattan) who if American are already using
10 kilowatts of energy each, 1-3 kilowatts electric. Which gives an
energy budget of 10 megawatts to 650 megawatts. Whoops.
I've never encountered a driveway snow melter, so I don't know how hot
they really feel or what to compare that to. 100 Watt light bulbs feel
pretty hot, though from a smaller area. Sunlight's on the order of
hundreds of watts/m2, and your number is 550 W/m2... okay, that's pretty
warm. Radiant heating underlying a town might be doable if we scale
down and spend a fair bit on it.
Though for a northern winter the question is how quickly you're losing
heat to cold air and wind.
A single dome over a city would be Hard. *Roofing* over a city might be
a lot easier, though still expensive, and perhaps compromised around
tall buildings. Anything from big tents to very long and repeated air
craft hanger structures... though the problem then is that what you want
for the cold winter is something you don't want for bright hot summers,
unless you can have smart roofs which change from absorptive to
reflective, and can open to let hot air out.
-xx- Damien X-)
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