4 ms·
the transportation of "heat" is a lot more complicated than the transportation of electricity. I'm not opposed to putting insulated piping everywhere to transpo
by ouid 4y ago
the transportation of "heat" is a lot more complicated than the transportation of electricity. I'm not opposed to putting insulated piping everywhere to transport hot water around. It's better than building bridges to nowhere, but i can't help but feel that the losses will scale badly. Pipes have a lot of surface area.
- kitd 4y agoThis is already widely done in Nordic countries and well understood. I went to a geothermal plant about 25km outside Reykjavik. It also supplies much of the communal hot water for the city. Between the plant and the city, in the depths of winter, it loses 1deg C.
- jabl 4y agoThe usual district heating pipes around here have an inner pipe where the actual hot water is pumped, then about 10cm of some yellowish insulation material (polyurethane?), and then an outer pipe to protect the insulation. AFAIU heat losses through the piping aren't considered a huge problem.
- jandrese 4y agoCampuses and some municipalities have steam pipes for distribution of heat. However, the economics of moving steam around vs. using the steam to turn a turbine to make electricity to run heat pumps is dubious. The electric solution is much more complicated, but it can also be used to cool the buildings in the summer and run lights, so the tradeoffs can be worth it.
- dontlaugh 4y agoMunicipal heating can be extremely efficient, precisely because it doesn't take that much insulation to make losses a non-issue and heat generation tends to scale up very well.