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District heating makes sense from a purely technical point of view, however it’s important to consider social incentives too. Such systems were everywhere in former Soviet union, also in China. They can work great when they are new, but underground pipes eventually develop leaks, need digging up and fixing, and this got neglected during the soviet stagnation era (from Brezhnev onwards). Consequently, most of the hot water disappeared underground (I heard this from Ukrainian engineering students), steam rose from the ground in city streets (I saw this) - often damaging nearby structures, and even in mid Siberia there were lines without snow, above the pipes (also saw this). The subsequent inefficiency was a major factor behind the flop of the post-soviet economies in the 1990s (Ukraine had highest emissions / GDP in the world at that time). Unfortunately fixing leaky old pipes is not sexy for political leaders who prefer big new power projects.
So - it can be done, but depends on the reliability of the social system.Maintenance of wires is so much easier than maintenance of pipes. Assuming the electricity is not from a fossil fuel source, distribution of electric heat will almost always be the superior choice (in my humble opinion).
But in many jurisdictions, green electricity is more expensive than fossil fuels. So now you’re looking at pipes to houses to deliver heat, or pipes to house to deliver gas – and the optimization problem becomes less obvious.
In a hypothetical Mars colony where you can clean-sheet design heating and cooling, it’ll almost certainly not be piped centralized heat. And based on the Soviet experience, it probably was never a good choice :/
Beh, they’re extremely common in the Nordics too, and I guarantee you the networks are well-maintained and not some sort of technical boondoggle. Sure there are occasional leaks etc. but they’re very quickly patched up
One of my profs in uni was super into the Drake’s Landing solar community’s district heating, it’s a solar district heating community in Okotoks which is just south of Calgary and from what I’ve understood it’s been pretty successful. It’d give great if that was the model
Edit: I did a bad and commented before reading, it’s totally called out in the article.
One thing that the article ignores is the reason this is so prevalent in Russia and eastern Europe: centralized heating was part of the Soviet housing model, and worked great when everyone was living in the Soviet high density cubicle apartments which made up most of Soviet towns. The losses are lower due to less piping, and the cost of installation is lower due to less piping. It doesn’t play well with the suburban or rural environment in most of Canada.
Furthermore, as the article does indicate, most of these centralized heat plants are fed by fossil fuels. It just kicks the can down the road.
Vancouver has a few district heating systems. One near Olympic village uses waste heat from sewage flow as the main heat source, only emitting carbon when sewage flow is slow/cool.
They use a heat pump to move heat from shower/dishwasher/laundry outflows into a high pressure steam system.
This is energy that would otherwise be lost warming the dirt around the sewers.
You can get home drain heat recovery systems too, and either pump the heat into the air or just passively pre-warm the water entering your house/watertank.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As governments look to tackle carbon emissions from buildings — the third largest source in Canada behind the oil and gas industry and transportation — it’s an idea that more of them are considering and implementing.
He added that there are other advantages for customers; they don’t have to worry about heating and cooling equipment — it’s the utility’s problem, and it’s mostly not located in the building itself anymore, freeing up space.
In Europe, there are 6,000 district energy systems serving 100 million people across 32 countries, and they provide at least half of the heating in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Slovakia, reported W.E.
Toronto lists district energy as a “key component” of its climate action plan, and is building or expanding a number of networks.
And it’s a solution backed by the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which has helped fund upfront costs for systems that include MDE and Lulu Island in Richmond, B.C.
Other networks are being built, upgraded or expanded across the country, including Vancouver, Halifax, Charlottetown, Iqaluit, communities in Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
The original article contains 1,201 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
