Power Plant Turns Waste into Energy and Doubles as a Ski Slope and Climbing Wall | Hacker News Reader

Power Plant Turns Waste into Energy and Doubles as a Ski Slope and Climbing Wall

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137 pointsabbe9847 comments

This reminded me of The Oregon Garden (see below). The City of Silverton zaps all its waste water with UV light, after other treatment processes, leaving the water a few degrees too hot to put back in to the watershed. So, the water is then pumped a few miles to a manmade, multi-acre wetlands habitat, that cools the water down and naturally adds nutrients prior to re-entering a stream. On top of that, the City has built a botanical garden that also uses this water and added a conference center. There is also a free educational program sponsored by a local grocery store owner that utilizes the area to teach K-12 kids about wetlands.

There are all sorts of other neat factoids about the complex, but there really are creative/ingenious ways to address our waste.

https://www.oregongarden.org/

I haven't visited in awhile, but they also have a Frank Lloyd Wright house (I think it's the only one in Oregon) that used to be in Wilsonville, but the owner wanted to bulldoze it in favor of a fancy mansion, so some people convinced him to allow them to move it to the Oregon Gardens.

I forgot about that! It is a very unique set of things that have accumulated around the gardens. I worked there through AmeriCorps in 04/05 and remember it fondly. I have always wondered why more small communities do not adopt a similar method for waste water treatment.

It's really cool the way they re-purpose the hot water.

They could also use something like a water plasma sanitation device that doesn't heat up the water.

This article reads like PR. No content about the power plant, just praise for making it a fake ski slope.

> what is possibly the greenest power plant in the world

That's a bold claim with no evidence. They're burning trash. How could that possibly be the greenest power plant in the world?

I share your skepticism. Waste-to-energy plants produce ash, and I can't imagine people will enjoy skiing in polluted air.

If anyone knows where to find more technical details about how this plant works, and what makes it "the greenest power plant in the world", I would be curious to take a look.

There are some technical details here, albeit in an advertorial format: http://www.volund.dk/Waste_to_Energy/References/ARC_Amager_B...

The plant is located very close to downtown Copenhagen, and there is no ash issue.

Although waste will be produced, that doesn't mean it's emitted into the air. There is a famous waste burning plant[1] (~6MW) within the city of Vienna, and which is near residential buildings and supplies the nearby general hospital with energy. The waste gases are thoroughly processed and filtered. It emits CO2 of course but it certainly wouldn't be permitted to operate at that location if it produced anything more immediately harmful to the surrounding population.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Müllverbrennungsanlage_Spittel...

Certainly not!

There are minerals that you can add that cause ash to turn into a glassy slag for later removal. You can also use a cyclonic collector similar to what is used in bagless vacuum cleaners to capture any particle that are contained in the gas, not to mention filters for removing sulfur and any other harmful chemicals that might harm the turbines that burn the resultant syngas as fuel.

It's probably plasma gasification plant which produces slag which in turn is used in paving roads, etc.

Personally I've looked what is slag consist of as it doesn't seem like it could be very green, but so far looks like good idea.

It's covered in grass so maybe they meant literally "greenest" as a joke.

*Plastic

> This article reads like PR.

Dane here. I agree strongly.

The plant is likely to be burning imported wood pellets as well, because its capacity is way above the amount of available waste[0]. So-called "biofuel". It's quite controversial, to say the least[1]. This is similar to what Drax (largest CO2 emitter in the UK) did to wiggle around the phase-out of coal and to get in on those subsidies for green energy, which apparently includes importing wood from forests in the US, because some clever lobbyists has ensured it qualifies as "green".

[0]: https://ing.dk/artikel/trods-advarsler-koebenhavnere-faar-mi...

[1]: https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

It's the goodnewsnetwork, so it's not likely to be PR. It's just a news network that covers what the editors perceive to be good news.

I just recently happened across an investment brochure for wood pellets (produced in Germany). The projected returns are pretty good, and the brochure definitely marketed them as "green" (renewable and carbon-neutral (if you plant enough new trees), local (if you consume them locally)).

I don't read Danish, but surely the power company will at some point be able to provide information on what percentage of their fuel (in the last year) was municipal waste and what part was e.g. "biofuel". Speculating just based on the amount of waste produced in Copenhagen (or Denmark) and the power plant's capacity doesn't appear very fruitful to me, because if your plant is capable of handling municipal waste and has more capacity than available waste, you could just as well import waste from other countries and turn that into electricity. (Depending on distance, burning pellets may of course be cheaper, as they have more energy per cubic meter. But pellets cost money, and treating waste for others makes money)

It is the color green.

It's covered in grass, albeit artificial. The ski course is green in summer.

"That’s right. Last weekend in Copenhagen, an 8-year dream was realized when the first paying skiers took their runs down a one-third-mile course, wrapping around what is possibly the greenest power plant in the world."

"A hybrid between a building and a landscape, the huge glass and mirrored structure contains planters covering the façade in a checkerboard pattern that might one day give the illusion of a GREEN mountain from every direction"

There's an epsisode of "Abstract - The Art of Design" on netflix in which this building is featured.

For anyone else more interested in the climbing wall, direct link to their climbing page: https://www.copenhill.dk/en/activities/climbing

Wow, 85m, that'd be fun to climb.

> The routes are designed and evaluated to be of a difficult category, where climbing becomes more difficult the higher you get.

> only experienced and trained climbers are allowed to climb to the top.

I wonder if they really mean allowed, or actually mean capable

The former, the article briefly mentions only certified climbers may climb some sections

That link mentions multipitch climbing, which is surprising but cool. Every artifical wall I've seen outside of a climbing gym was strictly for single pitch top roping. I'm not sure how that will actually work in practice though. Are they really going to open the wall up to lead climbing? Seems like a liability and logistical nightmare. The article certainly implies that's the case, but is worded confusingly enough that I'm skeptical.

Well, they reference some kind of qualification and there's plenty of climbing gyms around the world which allow for multipitch climbing. Often you have to bring your own rope though.

On the other hand, I can think of a multitude of ways of providing multipitch top roping in such an environment. Joining two ends of a rope and running it through both anchors would be fine. You could even use a series of autobelay devices with retrieval tag lines to keep things relatively simple (though arm destroying).

Lead climbing is a common accommodation in most climbing gyms. You have to take a certification test, but it's very common.

Just to point out, Copenhagen isn't (entirely) located on Amager, as the article suggests. Part of it is, but that's only a couple of neighborhoods in the city which is composed of 8-ish distinct areas. Copenhagen is located entirely on Sjælland, but calling it Sjælland Bakke wouldn't make sense in the local context.

And for further social context, they are essentially saying what for a Dane is the equivalent of "New York is located in New Jersey".

No, it's more like "New york is located in Brooklyn". As in, Amager is still a part of Copenhagen, but does not encompass all of it.

Most of Amager isn’t part of Copenhagen. Dragør, Kastrup, etc, are their own municipalities.

I didn't touch on it, but there is largely a negative connotation with Amager. Its nickname is "lorteøen" which translates to "shit island."

Also, to be more accurate, it would be like saying New York City is located on Long Island.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amager_Bakke I especially like that it can transition between heating and electricity production. Community heating is something I think North America needs to embrace more.

I feel most of Denmark should be able to mostly go thru winter with a thousand dollar heat pump...

Rugged individualism on an island with 2000 people per square kilometer...

They had trouble getting permission for people to be allowed on the roof back in May, because there was a chance for visitors to be cooked alive if there was an accident.

I wonder how they solved that, likely with a waiver, as it might be a risk you take if you ski on a power plant.

Someone probably did the math and realized dying from the skiing is a lot more likely.

Skiing survives in the highly litigious US only due to strong state laws that shield ski run companies from liability. Time will tell if this ski run can stay open without similar protections.

We have a few of these plastic ski slopes in the UK and I have to say on a cold, wet winter evening - which is often when people visit them, getting a bit of practice in for a ski holiday in the Alps - they can be bloody miserable. And from experience falling over on one I can testify that plastic has a lot less give in it than snow.

Now: an artificial outdoor slope with real snow running from say 2500m down to 1500m, that could be interesting, but would also require the tallest structure on earth.

I remember videos about this project from many years ago. His plan was to make the chimney puff a ring of smoke. Seems it took longer to finish than anticipated

The designer of the chimney puffer is serving a life sentence for the brutal murder and dismemberment of a Swedish journalist, on his home-made submarine.

holy smokes!

You'll need a source for a statement like that. You appear to be overstating the reality.

"It is correct that Peter Madsen worked on the prototype for BIG back in 2014 in his capacity of a welder," a company spokesperson told AD PRO.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/blarke-ingels-pete...

The Guardian says: "The smoke ring mechanism has been put on hold, in part because Peter Madsen, the artist who helped design it, was sentenced to life in prison for murder." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/13/danish-waste-t...

Maybe somebody overstated when talking to the journalist, or maybe the company understated his position in some short of PR movement...

I was just in Copenhagen and saw this building from a distance. I was curious about it then and am surprised to see it featured here.

This is pretty cool. It would be interesting to see more industrial projects using some of the space available to them for community activity spaces such as this

Hasnt this power plant been there for like 5 years at least? Not exactly new anymore

Plan has been around for a while, yes, but the building was not open to the public. Apparently that has now changed.

Why do I want to end this statement with “what could possibly go wrong ?”

It is an incinerator with a fancy roof.

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