4 ms·

I'm not an expert, but I suspect there will be a few driving use cases. Electrifying places far from the equator means heat pumps and/or district heating and pr

I'm not an expert, but I suspect there will be a few driving use cases. Electrifying places far from the equator means heat pumps and/or district heating and providing for their power demand in the dark. In some places wind can do that, but not everywhere. There are also loads that want very large, high-availability power and/or process heat. Reactors would pair well with things like metal refining or electrolysis to get the hydrogen for ammonia production. At the end of the day, there's never one source of energy which is a silver bullet for everything and the best approach is probably a diverse mix of supply.

zdragnar 1y ago
Electrifying heat far away from the equator is challenging. My area is largely heated by natural gas furnaces. During a cycle called a polar vortex, the utility company sent out a call to people to lower their thermostats because they were struggling to keep the lines pressurized with how much demand there was. The wind chill would drop below -40 most nights, sometimes significantly lower. Wind power won't help much because they need to shut down at the worst times- either too windy or icy. As much as I love heat pumps, having thousands upon thousands of homes switching to resistive heating because the pumps can't keep up in the evening is going to get ugly. District heating won't save you; the metro doesn't actually burn enough stuff to heat the cities and a significant part of the population is in semi or very rural areas that wouldn't benefit anyway. Edit: that same metro just put together a fund to renovate a few blocks of an underserved area. It's in the millions of dollars. I can't imagine the cost of converting the entire area to district heating; it would surely eclipse the entire government budget. This is the sort of thing that will only happen if you have the kind of fiat power of an imaginary wand.
- Symbiote 1y ago
  Copenhagen and much of its suburbs installed district heating, mostly after the oil crises in the 1970s. I found this article very interesting, although it didn't tell me how many kilometres of district heating pipe were laid each decade: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/24/9281 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/24/9281
  - mcosta 1y ago
    Copenhagen metro area has a population of 1.4M. That is less than where I live, a medium spanish city.
    - Symbiote 1y ago
      So what's your point? You are incorrect anyway; using the EU's definitions only Madrid and Barcelona are more populous than Copenhagen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_...
      - mcosta 1y ago
        My point is that Copenhagen is easy. Both "EU defined" metros in Spain are 2x and 3x than that. So Copenhagen is not an example of "it is posible everywhere". I mean, for example, in Madrid a neighbourhood has no electricity because is has been taken over by drug gangs. But at the same time it has electricity to grow marihuana. I guess that is a problem Copenhagen does now have.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    The city I was referring to has a population density half that of Copenhagen. Much of its energy is also supplied by power plants out in the suburbs rather than being closely sited, so it would likely need to start with the least economical places. The main city also hasn't recovered terribly well from the COVID lockdowns and boom of remote work keeping a lot of computers away. It wouldn't be impossible to do, but they would need someone else to help fund it.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  You don't need to burn stuff for district heating. Giant heat pumps can source heat from seas, rivers, underground reservoirs etc and the latter can even store energy seasonally that might otherwise be curtailed or wasted by e.g. data centers.

zdragnar 1y ago

Electrifying heat far away from the equator is challenging. My area is largely heated by natural gas furnaces. During a cycle called a polar vortex, the utility company sent out a call to people to lower their thermostats because they were struggling to keep the lines pressurized with how much demand there was. The wind chill would drop below -40 most nights, sometimes significantly lower. Wind power won't help much because they need to shut down at the worst times- either too windy or icy. As much as I love heat pumps, having thousands upon thousands of homes switching to resistive heating because the pumps can't keep up in the evening is going to get ugly. District heating won't save you; the metro doesn't actually burn enough stuff to heat the cities and a significant part of the population is in semi or very rural areas that wouldn't benefit anyway. Edit: that same metro just put together a fund to renovate a few blocks of an underserved area. It's in the millions of dollars. I can't imagine the cost of converting the entire area to district heating; it would surely eclipse the entire government budget. This is the sort of thing that will only happen if you have the kind of fiat power of an imaginary wand.

Symbiote 1y ago
Copenhagen and much of its suburbs installed district heating, mostly after the oil crises in the 1970s. I found this article very interesting, although it didn't tell me how many kilometres of district heating pipe were laid each decade: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/24/9281 https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/24/9281
- mcosta 1y ago
  Copenhagen metro area has a population of 1.4M. That is less than where I live, a medium spanish city.
  - Symbiote 1y ago
    So what's your point? You are incorrect anyway; using the EU's definitions only Madrid and Barcelona are more populous than Copenhagen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_...
    - mcosta 1y ago
      My point is that Copenhagen is easy. Both "EU defined" metros in Spain are 2x and 3x than that. So Copenhagen is not an example of "it is posible everywhere". I mean, for example, in Madrid a neighbourhood has no electricity because is has been taken over by drug gangs. But at the same time it has electricity to grow marihuana. I guess that is a problem Copenhagen does now have.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  The city I was referring to has a population density half that of Copenhagen. Much of its energy is also supplied by power plants out in the suburbs rather than being closely sited, so it would likely need to start with the least economical places. The main city also hasn't recovered terribly well from the COVID lockdowns and boom of remote work keeping a lot of computers away. It wouldn't be impossible to do, but they would need someone else to help fund it.
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
You don't need to burn stuff for district heating. Giant heat pumps can source heat from seas, rivers, underground reservoirs etc and the latter can even store energy seasonally that might otherwise be curtailed or wasted by e.g. data centers.