A year earlier, an underground steam pipe had exploded in Baltimore’s Camden Yards neighborhood, spreading debris across an entire block and injuring five people. In July 2018, for example, a steam pipe burst in New York’s Flatiron District, showering several blocks with asbestos and other debris, and forcing the evacuation of 49 buildings. Explosions don’t happen often, but when they do, they can be devastating. The steam pipes beneath a city street operate under high pressures. The electromagnetic interaction between the spinning coils and the magnets generates an electric current (4), which can then be sent to consumers (5). Inside the generator, attached to the spinning shaft, are coils of copper wire positioned between magnets. The impact of the steam spins the turbine’s blades, which are connected by a shaft to a generator (3). ![]() ![]() Pipes then funnel the pressurized steam toward the blades of a turbine (2). The water must be purified before it can be used in most boilers, to prevent the buildup of deposits. In every power plant, the generation of electricity begins in a boiler, which heats water into steam (1). (Credit: Chuckstock/Shutterstock Jay Smith) The Guggenheim Museum and the American Museum of Natural History use steam heat to regulate the humidity in their many spacious galleries. Steam sterilizes hundreds of surgical trays every day at Memorial Sloan Kettering. The strikingly slender footprint of 432 Park Avenue is possible because it doesn’t need its own bulky heating system on its lower level. The facility is in a flood zone, and it was badly damaged during Superstorm Sandy, so critical equipment has since been elevated. Four of the nine boilers in the plant are enormous - about 10 stories tall. Just one power plant in Manhattan’s East Village provides about half of the city’s steam. ![]() Steam heats the reflecting pools of the 9/11 memorial.īeecher’s Handmade Cheese in the Flat Iron district of Manhattan uses steam to heat its curds. “You’d have smokestacks like the industrial revolution in London.” NYC Fast Facts “Every building would have a chimney stack because they would need their own internal combustion-type boiler,” says Michael Brown, the plant manager at Con Edison’s East River Generating Station. Without steam power, the city’s iconic skyline would look very different. “The pools are also heated by steam to make sure they run throughout the winter without freezing up,” says Cuomo.Ĭon Edison currently has five power plants in the city that use natural gas to boil more than a million gallons of water every hour at peak times. He reels off the names of some of Con Ed’s steam-heating customers, a list that includes many of the most storied pieces of real estate in the world: Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building, the new World Trade Center complex and the 9/11 memorial’s twin reflecting pools. ![]() “We estimate between 2.5 and 3 million people are affected by the steam system,” says Frank Cuomo, the general manager for steam distribution at Con Edison in New York - that’s about a third of the city’s official population. Now, more than 100 miles of steam pipes lie 5 to 8 feet beneath the pavement in New York, just above the subway tunnels, embedded in concrete to protect them from accidental construction damage. Manhattan’s steam service started in 1881, when the 225-foot-tall chimney of the NY Steam Corporation’s single power plant was the second-tallest structure in Manhattan, after the spire of Trinity Church. In New York and other large cities around the world, steam does more than just generate electricity in power plants: It’s also piped directly into buildings for heating, cooling and other uses.
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