How Goldman stays cool

Goldman literally has a vault full of ice cubes.

I wasn't sure if I had imagined this fun fact or not, but sure enough, Goldman's FiDi headquarters is literally air conditioned in hot weather by the melting of massive ice blocks in their basement.

According to the WSJ, which covers such fun topics,

The basement houses 92 storage tanks that hold 1.7 million pounds of ice made each night when electricity rates are lower than during daytime hours. Air cooled by the melting ice circulates throughout the building.

That would only fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool one third of the way.

Without knowing anything about the economics of air conditioning, this sounds at first like nothing more than a gimmick. But apparently, the system can be as much as 40 percent cheaper compared to traditional methods. The system, called thermal storage, freezes the water into ice at night to take advantage of lower electricity costs.

"It requires about 150 to 400 pounds of ice to cool down a person in an office building every day," said Mark MacCracken, chief executive of Calmac.

Same.