# What big cities still run on steam? Why would they, besides infrastructure capital investment? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 29, 2012, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187 "2012-10-29T04:42:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/1 "2012-10-29T04:42:03Z")
In the run-up to Hurricane Sandy, we, like a significant portion of Manhattan (at least as far as i know from 23rd St. to the Battery, on the East Side) have no hot water, and there isn’t even a breeze or drop from the sky. I asked a Con Ed guy on the street shutting down a manhole who said that they’re doing it so that floods won’t hit the steam pipes and cause explosive rupture, with flying manholes to boot. The whole city, except for some (most?) corporate buildings, runs on steam heat. What do other cities have? Somehow steam sounds too old a technology, but I don’t know a thing about the whole question. Leo ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/2 "2012-10-29T05:07:49Z")
big cities with big buildings that would take huge boilers to heat don’t do that in the building. big cities have power plants with huge boilers. other steam utilities might just produce steam. they sell steam service to big buildings in big cities. university campuses will have a steam plant which produces steam to heat the whole campus which would be a number of city blocks. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/3 "2012-10-29T05:27:22Z")
I found out a few years ago that Milwaukee still produces steam for a few hundred customers. We certainly don’t _run on_ steam, but many business rely on it very heavily. Until I read that, I had no idea that we had steam pipes underground (mainly in the industrial area). I’d guess that most people in Milwaukee have no idea either. It doesn’t really come up very often. Looking up an article about Milwaukee steam it mentions that 80 cities in the US with steam plants, though it doesn’t mention how big these plants are. For example, the article says "There are also two plants that serve the University of Wisconsin-Madison ". I don’t know if Madison is counted as one of those 80. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/4 "2012-10-29T12:13:40Z")
Detroit produces steam for a number of buildings in the downtown area. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/5 "2012-10-29T12:43:23Z")
Let’s say you have a big fired power plant. It may run on coal, or gas, or fuel oil, or some kind of biomass, but the crux of the matter is you burn something to make high pressure steam, then use the steam to turn a turbine and make electricity. This steam, once used, is still steam. It’s steam at a lower pressure, but there’s still plenty of energy in it, so you use multi-stage tyrbines to get the most electricity out of it, but at the end, it’s still steam, and there’s still energy in it even when it gets down to a paltry 150 psig or so. When you’re done, there’s not enough energy to spin a turbine, but there’s still heat, around 1000 BTU’s per pound. You’ve already paid for it, so you look around for a home for it. Some you can use to pre heat inlet water for your turbine, but it doesn’t use it all, so if you can find an industrial or municipal steam demand it doesn’t take a flash of genius to realize that here is a sink for your energy. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/6 "2012-10-29T13:46:20Z")
The generic term for this sort of heat is “[district heating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating)” and many cities in the US, Canada and Europe use it. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/7 "2012-10-29T14:30:27Z")
[Reykjavik](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Iceland). ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/8 "2012-10-29T15:59:17Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > big cities with big buildings that would take huge boilers to heat don’t do that in the building. big cities have power plants with huge boilers. other steam utilities might just produce steam. they sell steam service to big buildings in big cities. > > university campuses will have a steam plant which produces steam to heat the whole campus which would be a number of city blocks. I was about a block away when a steam plant at [UIC](http://www.uic.edu/uic/) blew up in the early '90s. It sounded like the end of the world. Luckily no one was hurt. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/9 "2012-10-29T16:22:09Z")
Steam is very very cheap because it is very very simple. Most of the other technologies for generating electricity use steam as an intermediary: nuclear power heats water to drive turbines, and so does oil and coal. Using the heat directly obviously saves a major step. (Although some systems use some of the steam to generate electricity as well as provide heat: these are called cogenerating.) Simple and cheap means that these systems can last a very long time and stay competitive once the infrastructure is in place. In concept, you can compare it to electric cars. Generating the electricity in central plants creates cost efficiencies and lowers pollution compared to thousands of cars generating their own power. Centralized steal boilers have the same advantage over individual building boilers. In some circumstances the advantages go away, so there is no overall solution, but for certain purposes bulk central generation is a huge plus. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/10 "2012-10-29T17:14:10Z")
Here’s a story with some background on the steam loop in [St. Louis](http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/broken-pipe-sends-giant-steam-plume-over-downtown-st-louis/article_9f2aef3e-7f19-11e1-b196-0019bb30f31a.html), but more importantly, some really cool video of what it looks like when a stem pipe ruptures. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/11 "2012-10-29T18:23:10Z")
Huh. Thanks. I should have known all that. Years before 9/11 a friend and I were walking in the street when a manhole blew. In blind panic we ran away, both from the noise and shockwave, and thinking it was a terror attack. Lost my wallet. About **Joey P.** and the general ignorance of Milwaukeeans (ites?), in NYC billowing steam from the streets is a constant event; perhaps it is a marker for the city, similar in concept to the Empire State Building. I don’t know, but it is certainly used to set wonderful, moody, and even malevolent implications in the opening of _Taxi Driver_. (It just occurs to me that it is no different in kind, and brilliantly transformed to urban semiology, of Grimm’s and the Romantics’ Black Forest, or the more specific Dracula’s Castle environs.) But how is so much head generated for distribution? I live next door to the plant, so we get straight from the teat, so to speak. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2012, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/12 "2012-10-29T18:26:32Z")
Sorry, video example from _Taxi Driver_: [Taxi Driver - Trailer - YouTube](http://youtu.be/bEJkjMkxJh0) ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/13 "2012-10-30T06:49:11Z")
In Minneapolis, the downtown district heating system is partially powered by burning the garbage collected in the metro area. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2012, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/14 "2012-10-30T21:14:07Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > In Minneapolis, the downtown district heating system is partially powered by burning the garbage collected in the metro area. I was just going to say this. [Here](http://www.nrgthermal.com/centers/pdfs/NRGminneapolisSystemMap.pdf) is a map of the covered area. The map is pretty much downtown Minneapolis, so you can see that a good portion of it is covered, including the convention center and 3 sports stadiums. According to the [website for the incinerator](http://hennepin.us/HERC), about 1/3rd of the county’s garbage is burned, productiing enough electricity for 25,000 homes and enough steam to replace the natural gas used by 1500 homes (but the steam actually goes to downtown building instead of single residences), and the garbage doesn’t need to be landfilled. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/15 "2012-11-03T01:46:49Z")
Hello world, for real. I’m back!! The Con Ed plant across the street–The One That Blew Up–is humming away, and the land of night below 40th St. is ablaze. And I’m actually writing this from my WiFi at home, not at some godforsaken Starbucks. Still no hot water for x days. Steam, steam, glorious steam… ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-big-cities-still-run-on-steam-why-would-they-besides-infrastructure-capital-investment/639187/16 "2012-11-03T01:52:04Z")
Toronto has the converse: it takes in very cold water from deep in Lake Ontario and uses it to cool buildings in summer, afterwards releasing the water at a shallow level.