Can dancing save the planet? A Scottish nightclub is turning body heat into energy

Chopping down on purple meat. Switching to energy-saving gentle bulbs. Flying much less. There are lots of selections we will make to assist struggle local weather change.

A Glasgow arts venue that doubles as a nightclub, SWG3, tells its patrons to bounce.

In October 2022, after three years of improvement, the venue turned the primary on the planet to modify to an influence system that turns dancers’ physique warmth into renewable power. Initially, SWG3 aimed to launch the brand new system in time for COP26, the United Nations Local weather Change Convention, in Glasgow in 2021, the Scotsman reported.

The inventor of the system, referred to as Bodyheat, is geothermal entrepreneur David Townsend. Townsend additionally occurs to be an everyday nightclub-goer. He says heating and cooling, specifically, eat up a variety of fossil power. To scale back power waste, he got here up with the concept of storing the warmth generated by human our bodies on the dancefloor and utilizing it as a supply of thermal energy for heating and cooling the buildings.

“Once you’re not doing something, you may generate 50 watts for warmth, however while you’re full pelt you’ll be able to generate 500 watts of warmth,” he advised Dateline.

“When you’ve got a thousand individuals in right here, that’s sufficient to warmth 65 houses, and a variety of gasoline that isn’t being burnt.”

Geothermal entrepreneur David Townsend created the Bodyheat system that turns dancers’ physique warmth into thermal power.

How does the system work?

It begins with a unit mounted above the dancefloor that sucks up sizzling air. The warmth from that air is extracted and transferred right into a fluid utilizing the identical know-how as fridges.

That warmth travels by means of copper pipes to a room the place it’s transferred once more, however this time into water.

The water is pumped down 200 metres by means of a sequence of pipe loops into 12 boreholes beneath the membership’s group backyard. Because it travels, the warmth is transferred into the bottom the place it’s saved for future use.

When you’ve got a thousand individuals in right here, that’s sufficient to warmth 65 houses, and a variety of gasoline that isn’t being burnt.

David Townsend

The venture price £600,000 ($1.1 million) however Townsend estimates the financial savings it makes in power payments means it’s going to pay for itself over 5 years.

A crowd at Glasgow’s SWG3. Credit score: SBS Dateline.

SW3G supervisor Andrew Fleming-Brown says the innovation struck a chord with the nightclub’s viewers as a result of everybody can “contribute to the web zero heating and cooling system” simply by dancing and having fun with themselves.

“I feel the primary time you point out it to anybody, it is similar to, ‘That is completely ridiculous,” he advised Dateline.

“The following factor individuals ask is, ‘Does it scent?’ And you are like, ‘No. It does not. It does not in any respect.”

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