4 ms·
Which is where district heating comes in. Utilities, who unlike households are fully exposed to fluctuations of the electricity market, are increasingly switchi
by usrusr 7y ago
Which is where district heating comes in. Utilities, who unlike households are fully exposed to fluctuations of the electricity market, are increasingly switching their cogen pants to decoupled operation where large heat storage elements are added so that the plant can run as a peaker plant. It's not glamorous because they are still burning fossil fuel, but it's a huge improvement not only over separate burning for heat but also over synchronous cogen that would follow the heart demand. It's even a reasonable long term investment because a fully decarbonized economy would shave supply peaks with power-to-gas.
- makomk 7y agoYeah, in practice I think district heating is probably the only way to actually improve on the thermodynamic efficiency of just taking all that high-grade energy and converting it straight to low-grade heat. Running heat pumps off electricty from non-cogeneration gas plants can only roughly match the efficiency of gas heating, and smaller-scale CHP setups have efficiency losses that make them questionable.
- piceas 7y agoAn example from Hamburg is the Energiebunker. I went on a tour a few years ago which I can recommend. One comment was they had trouble with the local landlords not wanting to take up the offer resulting in poor utilisation. https://www.internationale-bauausstellung-hamburg.de/en/projects/energiebunker/projekt/energy-bunker.html https://www.internationale-bauausstellung-hamburg.de/en/proj...