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>>Tim: We've got a problem.
Cities are growing and they're growing too fast.
60 million people are moving to cities
and urban areas each year.
That’s over a million every week.
There will soon be 59 cities
with populations over five million.
And cities emit over 80% of the
world’s carbon dioxide.
And that’s a problem.
But we got a solution.
We’re going to tell you what it is,
and then we’ll watch a crazy scientist
blow up a trash can.
[Music plays]
So we got a problem.
And we I got a problem, I find a smart guy.
Enter John Cohn.
IBM Fellow, Mad Scientist. superhero.
John, what is it that you folks in Burlington
are doing that’s help making this site work better.
>>John: Well, this facility makes amazing stuff.
We make chips for video games,
cell phones, GPS.
It’s a very energy intensive process.
But it turns out that a lot of our energy
goes into cooling water and air
to cool all the equipment.
>>Tim: ok.
>>John: We have a super computer down in
Yorktown called Deep Thunder.
>>Tim: That was with Bruce willis and Sydney Portier?
>>John: Oh, I love that movie.
>>Tim: That was great.
>>John: No, this thing is amazing.
It can make a weather prediction.
Not just for the area, like tomorrow
it’s going to be sunny.
It will tell you within a six block region
what the temperature is going to be every hour,
and more importantly, what the humidity is going to be.
So, if we know it’s going to get a little cooler,
we can actually use the cooler and dryer
air to help cool the water.
>>Tim: It’s like opening a window.
>>John: Yeah, like a big fancy expensive window.
By using that information, we’ve been able
to save hundreds of thousands of dollars
a year on our electric bill,
and put a whole lot less carbon in the air
>>Tim: That's a pretty good savings.
>>John: Yeah, not bad.
And I think if it worked here
it would work in a city,
might even work in your own home.
>>Tim: So this intelligence thing intrigues me.
Can you show me more?
>>John: Sure
>>Tim: And then can we blow something up?
>>John: Later Tim, later.
So this is one of those big chillers I was talking about.
It’s kinda like a giant refrigerator.
What it does is it takes the water
from all the process tools, brings it in,
and it chills it down to about 48 or 50
degrees (F) and then we can recirculate it again.
It takes a tremendous amount of power.
to cool all that water.
This unit right here takes over a million watts to run.
That’s why it’s so loud.
>>Tm: I have no idea what you just said.
>>John: So this is where we’re harnessing mother nature.
We’re taking the cool air and using that
to cool the water instead of those
compressors in the other room.
>>Tim: So how does it work?
>>John: It’s pretty old school technology,
we’re just making it smarter.
We’re taking the cold air, and we just
predicted it’s going to get cooler.
And we’re blowing it over some pipes
that have the hot water in it.
and dumping water over it at the same time
so what that does is just evaporatively
takes the heat away and puts it
in the atmosphere harmlessly
a lot less power
So this is where the process gets smarter, Tim
cause everything in here is instrumented
we've got all that information in here at our fingertips
But the magic comes when we can take the feed from Deep Thunder
we can start to make smarter decisions
on whether we're gunna turn one of those
very expensive chillers off
a little bit earlier, or delay
turning one of them on.
And that way we let Mother Nature
do the heavy lifting
for the chilling, and that's where
the savings comes in.
>>Tim: Oh, I'm sorry. Were you talking to me?
Could you run through that again?
Alright doc, what do we got here?
>>John: Well, all that talk about cooling and heating
got me thinking that we should use a little
cool and a little heat to make a satisfying little boom.
>>Tim: Alright, so what you're saying is that this is kind of a model
on how micro-forcasting
can help cities be smarter.
>>John: No man, I'm just saying science is fun!
OK. Don't try ths at home.
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