5 ms·

We (Finland) are probably not going to move towards electric heating to any significant degree. Currently direct (resistive) electric is already the most common

We (Finland) are probably not going to move towards electric heating to any significant degree. Currently direct (resistive) electric is already the most common means of heating in single-family homes and other low-density residential buildings. Heat pumps are fortunately becoming popular especially in new development, and with them a significant reduction of electricity use compared to direct electric. For condos and apartment buildings by far the most common method of heating is district heating (teleheating) [1], and historically this has been very carbon intensive, even though cogeneration of both heat and electricity in one plant is quite efficient (efficiency > 80%; most Finnish thermal power plants are cogen). Fossil fuels and peat are being replaced with more sustainable (mostly wood-based) fuels, but attaining the emission goals requires burning less fuel, period, which means technologies like geothermal boreholes and large-scale heatpump facilities. SMR nuclear reactors, if they ever become mainstream, would be an excellent source of clean heat and electricity for cities. Current nuclear power plants are located (by design) too far from cities for it to be economical to pipe their waste heat to where it's needed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating

ncmncm 5y ago
Geothermal boreholes are suddenly much more practical than anybody had guessed, with laser drilling. Its operating cost will necessarily be quite a bit more than solar, but it works in the Arctic winter, 24x7, and provides cogen heat.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Knowing that we have test plant with geothermal and the depth required is 6,4km even with laser drilling the effectiveness might not be so great.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    We will need to wait and see. It might end up cheaper to ship in ammonia synthesized from solar in the tropics. Most likely it will be a combination of several: normally, delivery by transmission line because cheapest, but with geothermal held ready for strategic backup, and stockpiled ammonia for load peaks. Shipping will get cheaper as fuel does, but is already astonishingly cheap.
    - cplusplusfellow 5y ago
      In what way is shipping fuel expected to get cheaper? I’m not aware of any significant and serious efforts to replace ships with a green fuel, and they comprise a huge percentage of our emissions.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        To remain competitive, shipping will need to re-tank to burn tropically synthesized (most likely) anhydrous ammonia, which will soon be cheaper even than bunker oil. Ships still burning oil will find increasingly fewer ports open to them. The west-African coastal Sahara, coastal Peru/Bolivia, Baja California, Arabia/Sudan/Eritrea, Yemen/Oman/Pakistan, Socotra, and north-western Australia all look like good places to site solar-driven ammonia synthesis. I don't doubt that less geographically-favored sites will dominate instead.
- russnes 5y ago
  probably a stupid question, but is it a possibility that geothermal energy (if adopted to a great extent) could take away from the earths core energy and reduce the magnetic field?
  - sharkster711 5y ago
    From https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/baseload/can-geothermal-energy-offset-global-warming-51186/#gref https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/baseload/can-geothermal... Some 42 million megawatts of energy reach the surface continually and are radiated into space as the earth cools from its initial molten state more than 4 billion years ago. No feasible amount of geothermal development could make even a small dent in this process. Furthermore, the earth’s heat budget is continually replenished by the radioactive decay of naturally occurring elements, and almost all of the energy associated with each decay event is converted to heat. Plus, the heat content of the geothermal reservoir rocks is continually replenished by conduction of heat from the earth’s deeper interior.
    - russnes 5y ago
      I see. 42 million megawatts is 42,000 gigawatts. A quick google search tells me that typical power output of a nuclear power plant is around 1 gigawatt. So a single nuclear power plant would be roughly equivalent to 0.002% of earths geothermal energy radiation. It doesn't sound like much, but for something as crucial as the earth's magnetic field, I wouldn't want to reduce it one bit. I guess if the heat is radiated into space anyways and we simply capture that it doesn't speed up the core's energy loss, but if we start digging into the core and allowing energy to escape faster, we would effectively speed it up, right?
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        If only all problems were as trivially ignorable as this one. The radius of the Earth is 4000 miles. A 10-mile hole is thus 1/400 of the way to the center. You may as well worry that scratching the skin of an apple might damage the seeds.
jacquesm 5y ago
The price of gas has had an enormous effect on the waiting times for solar panel and heatpump installations here in Western Europe, how is this in Finland right now?
- 2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
  Right now it's too cold, but I imagine things will start rolling when the snow melts in a couple of months.
DeathArrow 5y ago
>SMR nuclear reactors, if they ever become mainstream, would be an excellent source of clean heat and electricity for cities. Current nuclear power plants are located (by design) too far from cities for it to be economical to pipe their waste heat to where it's needed. I don't believe that waste heat is plenty. Here, in Romania, we use the waste heat from the nuclear power plant as district heating but that is enough for a small town near it.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
District heating and heat pumps can be combined in some clever hybrid ways. You can have tiny heat pumps in every home that share a district-wide pipe as a heat source, you can use giant/deep heat pumps to supply the district-wide pipe and you can do both at the same time. And heat pumps can also be used to cool things, returning heat into the system and allowing for big solar gains in windows, since the heat generated can be re-used when it's more than needed rather than wasted.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  Yep, and cooling is rapidly becoming a problem comparable to heating; summers are getting hotter but Finnish construction norms are still all about keeping homes warm in the winter as opposed to cool in the summer. Few Finnish homes have AC, except for those that have two-way heat pumps. Portable AC units have been in very high demand in the past few summers due to heat waves that used to be exceptional but are quickly becoming the norm.
danuker 5y ago
What kind of coefficients of performance are there in Finland, for heat pumps? And what kind of heat pumps are there? Are air-sourced pumps any use in the Finnish climate?
- Sharlin 5y ago
  Not an expert, but apparently the latest ASHPs still have a CoP of around 2 at –20°C and unity at –30°C, which is pretty much the extreme low for the less-sparsely populated parts of the country. Ground source HPs are of course better in that respect but the initial investment is larger. Apparently GSHP is the most popular mode of heating in newly built single-family homes.
  - danuker 5y ago
    Thank you! In that case, they are very much worth it. In Romania, with the current absurd gas prices, even resistive heating is cheaper when powered by the national hydroelectric supplier.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
  Our heat pump (older model, not sure how old it is since it was in the house when we bought it) works pretty well down to -15. After that it's better to shut it down, save the electricity, and use the good old wood heaters that have been installed since the house was built in the 50's.

ncmncm 5y ago

Geothermal boreholes are suddenly much more practical than anybody had guessed, with laser drilling. Its operating cost will necessarily be quite a bit more than solar, but it works in the Arctic winter, 24x7, and provides cogen heat.

Ekaros 5y ago
Knowing that we have test plant with geothermal and the depth required is 6,4km even with laser drilling the effectiveness might not be so great.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  We will need to wait and see. It might end up cheaper to ship in ammonia synthesized from solar in the tropics. Most likely it will be a combination of several: normally, delivery by transmission line because cheapest, but with geothermal held ready for strategic backup, and stockpiled ammonia for load peaks. Shipping will get cheaper as fuel does, but is already astonishingly cheap.
  - cplusplusfellow 5y ago
    In what way is shipping fuel expected to get cheaper? I’m not aware of any significant and serious efforts to replace ships with a green fuel, and they comprise a huge percentage of our emissions.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      To remain competitive, shipping will need to re-tank to burn tropically synthesized (most likely) anhydrous ammonia, which will soon be cheaper even than bunker oil. Ships still burning oil will find increasingly fewer ports open to them. The west-African coastal Sahara, coastal Peru/Bolivia, Baja California, Arabia/Sudan/Eritrea, Yemen/Oman/Pakistan, Socotra, and north-western Australia all look like good places to site solar-driven ammonia synthesis. I don't doubt that less geographically-favored sites will dominate instead.
russnes 5y ago
probably a stupid question, but is it a possibility that geothermal energy (if adopted to a great extent) could take away from the earths core energy and reduce the magnetic field?
- sharkster711 5y ago
  From https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/baseload/can-geothermal-energy-offset-global-warming-51186/#gref https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/baseload/can-geothermal... Some 42 million megawatts of energy reach the surface continually and are radiated into space as the earth cools from its initial molten state more than 4 billion years ago. No feasible amount of geothermal development could make even a small dent in this process. Furthermore, the earth’s heat budget is continually replenished by the radioactive decay of naturally occurring elements, and almost all of the energy associated with each decay event is converted to heat. Plus, the heat content of the geothermal reservoir rocks is continually replenished by conduction of heat from the earth’s deeper interior.
  - russnes 5y ago
    I see. 42 million megawatts is 42,000 gigawatts. A quick google search tells me that typical power output of a nuclear power plant is around 1 gigawatt. So a single nuclear power plant would be roughly equivalent to 0.002% of earths geothermal energy radiation. It doesn't sound like much, but for something as crucial as the earth's magnetic field, I wouldn't want to reduce it one bit. I guess if the heat is radiated into space anyways and we simply capture that it doesn't speed up the core's energy loss, but if we start digging into the core and allowing energy to escape faster, we would effectively speed it up, right?
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      If only all problems were as trivially ignorable as this one. The radius of the Earth is 4000 miles. A 10-mile hole is thus 1/400 of the way to the center. You may as well worry that scratching the skin of an apple might damage the seeds.

jacquesm 5y ago

The price of gas has had an enormous effect on the waiting times for solar panel and heatpump installations here in Western Europe, how is this in Finland right now?

2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
Right now it's too cold, but I imagine things will start rolling when the snow melts in a couple of months.

DeathArrow 5y ago

>SMR nuclear reactors, if they ever become mainstream, would be an excellent source of clean heat and electricity for cities. Current nuclear power plants are located (by design) too far from cities for it to be economical to pipe their waste heat to where it's needed. I don't believe that waste heat is plenty. Here, in Romania, we use the waste heat from the nuclear power plant as district heating but that is enough for a small town near it.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

District heating and heat pumps can be combined in some clever hybrid ways. You can have tiny heat pumps in every home that share a district-wide pipe as a heat source, you can use giant/deep heat pumps to supply the district-wide pipe and you can do both at the same time. And heat pumps can also be used to cool things, returning heat into the system and allowing for big solar gains in windows, since the heat generated can be re-used when it's more than needed rather than wasted.

Sharlin 5y ago
Yep, and cooling is rapidly becoming a problem comparable to heating; summers are getting hotter but Finnish construction norms are still all about keeping homes warm in the winter as opposed to cool in the summer. Few Finnish homes have AC, except for those that have two-way heat pumps. Portable AC units have been in very high demand in the past few summers due to heat waves that used to be exceptional but are quickly becoming the norm.

danuker 5y ago

What kind of coefficients of performance are there in Finland, for heat pumps? And what kind of heat pumps are there? Are air-sourced pumps any use in the Finnish climate?

Sharlin 5y ago
Not an expert, but apparently the latest ASHPs still have a CoP of around 2 at –20°C and unity at –30°C, which is pretty much the extreme low for the less-sparsely populated parts of the country. Ground source HPs are of course better in that respect but the initial investment is larger. Apparently GSHP is the most popular mode of heating in newly built single-family homes.
- danuker 5y ago
  Thank you! In that case, they are very much worth it. In Romania, with the current absurd gas prices, even resistive heating is cheaper when powered by the national hydroelectric supplier.
2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
Our heat pump (older model, not sure how old it is since it was in the house when we bought it) works pretty well down to -15. After that it's better to shut it down, save the electricity, and use the good old wood heaters that have been installed since the house was built in the 50's.