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Many universities and other institutions like hospitals are steam heated because they have the steam anyway from their own combined-cycle power plants. I guess

by romed 8y ago

Many universities and other institutions like hospitals are steam heated because they have the steam anyway from their own combined-cycle power plants. I guess this is a legacy of universities having power before widespread electrification? In any case it’s very efficient. Steam can provide not just heating but also cooling and refrigeration. If you already have the technical staff to run your own power station then maintaining steam distribution should cause you any additional headaches.

Kadin 8y ago
Up until the advent of inexpensive heat pumps, using electricity for space heating wasn't very practical. There were some electrically-heated (using resistance-coils baseboards) in the 50s and 60s, I guess when they thought electricity would be "too cheap to meter" soon enough, but it requires electrical distribution infrastructure well above what you'd otherwise need for housekeeping loads. The big reason for centralized steam rather than small boilers in each building was fuel. Penn State (and many other colleges / institutions in the northeast) was originally heated with coal. There was a rail spur that ran to the campus power plant for delivering it. Delivering coal to each building would have been a lot of effort, and negates the efficiency of a large boiler compared to small ones. So you create the steam in one place and then distribute the steam. (Also there used to be fairly strict rules on having a licensed "operating engineer" at each boiler when it was operating.) With natural gas now being the dominant fuel, it's almost certainly more efficient to distribute the gas and then generate the steam (or hot water, much more common today) near the point of use, with a high-efficiency boiler/heater.
- jcrawfordor 8y ago
  My employer has a campus similar in size to a midsize university, which formerly used district steam heating from a central boiler plant. About a decade ago it was decided that moving to a modern distributed system with a natural gas boiler in each building would net better energy and cost efficiency, and while the transition took several years and was fairly disruptive in terms of the construction in each building, it's ended up delivering as promised. I just don't think central heating has the advantages today it used to, unless you're in the unusual situation that you have a "free" source of steam (e.g. from process equipment). The boilers used now are compact, low maintenance, and have impressive remote management features. The "steam plant" staff here went from a dozen operating a building to a computer workstation at the facilities operations desk for remote monitoring and a few roving maintenance technicians. We are also currently transitioning from a central standby power plant to generators located at each building. This is being done for almost the exact same reasons - the generators today are small, low cost, perform testing and exercise automatically, and are remotely monitored.

by romed 8y ago

Kadin 8y ago

Up until the advent of inexpensive heat pumps, using electricity for space heating wasn't very practical. There were some electrically-heated (using resistance-coils baseboards) in the 50s and 60s, I guess when they thought electricity would be "too cheap to meter" soon enough, but it requires electrical distribution infrastructure well above what you'd otherwise need for housekeeping loads. The big reason for centralized steam rather than small boilers in each building was fuel. Penn State (and many other colleges / institutions in the northeast) was originally heated with coal. There was a rail spur that ran to the campus power plant for delivering it. Delivering coal to each building would have been a lot of effort, and negates the efficiency of a large boiler compared to small ones. So you create the steam in one place and then distribute the steam. (Also there used to be fairly strict rules on having a licensed "operating engineer" at each boiler when it was operating.) With natural gas now being the dominant fuel, it's almost certainly more efficient to distribute the gas and then generate the steam (or hot water, much more common today) near the point of use, with a high-efficiency boiler/heater.

jcrawfordor 8y ago
My employer has a campus similar in size to a midsize university, which formerly used district steam heating from a central boiler plant. About a decade ago it was decided that moving to a modern distributed system with a natural gas boiler in each building would net better energy and cost efficiency, and while the transition took several years and was fairly disruptive in terms of the construction in each building, it's ended up delivering as promised. I just don't think central heating has the advantages today it used to, unless you're in the unusual situation that you have a "free" source of steam (e.g. from process equipment). The boilers used now are compact, low maintenance, and have impressive remote management features. The "steam plant" staff here went from a dozen operating a building to a computer workstation at the facilities operations desk for remote monitoring and a few roving maintenance technicians. We are also currently transitioning from a central standby power plant to generators located at each building. This is being done for almost the exact same reasons - the generators today are small, low cost, perform testing and exercise automatically, and are remotely monitored.