District heating systems in Europe.

Unknown

I found this site while looking for something else. I think it's interesting that they don't dump the heat from cooling steam generators that make power, but sell the heat. Here's the article...

District or community heating involves the provision of heat to a number of homes from a single, central boiler. The number of homes heated can vary from a couple of streets, to a whole estate; or may involve one or several tower blocks. As a form of heating it has existed in parts of Europe and the United States since the latter part of the last century, and its UK history dates from the 1900s, when schemes were established in several cities including Glasgow, Manchester, Dundee and Chesterfield.
Following the second world war, a number of reports on district heating were published, which stimulated renewed action on developing such schemes. The busiest period was during the 1960s and early 1970s, when over 500 district and group (smaller scale) schemes were installed, primarily by local authorities on new housing estates, as part of the boom in council housing construction during that period. By the mid 1970s, over 400,000 users (most of them council house tenants) had district heating.(1)

The popularity of district heating began to wane following.....

http://www.energy.rochester.edu/uk/chpa/commheat/

Noel

Tony Conner

District Energy...

...in North America is a tough, thin-margin business in most cases. They were big in the early days of electric power generation from coal. The generating plants were pretty small by today's standards, and usually located in the middle of town, where the electical load was. Lots of surrounding buildings burned coal to make steam for heating, so it wasn't long before the plant guys figured out that, y'know, instead of condensing the exhaust steam off the engines that drive the generators, we could sell it to the other buildings nearby for heating. Not only do we NOT have to spend money on condensing equipment and operations, we can get people to PAY US to condense our exhaust steam. This arrangement bopped along pretty nicely until after WWII. Electrical demand jumped, and the old plants were replaced by much newer, bigger ones that were typically located some distance from downtown cores. This was combined with a bunch of other factors, like smaller gas & oil heating systems that didn't require shovelling coal and ash. People also left the walk-up apartments in urban areas, and moved to the 'burbs. There a lots of old apartments over stores downtown here that are really hard to rent. There's no parking for the tenents. They pre-date people having cars, and most people don't want them because of that.

You really need high energy costs (like Europe) to make district energy roll. Otherwise, it's a tough payback with a really big upfront capital investment.

Unknown

Thanks, Tony

That's comforting to know!

Noel

Bob W._2

Right, district heating died with the small municipal power ...

plants. I paid about $2.00/month for heat in the winter of 1971-72 in a upstairs apartment. We have a few small towns in the area that still have district heat. One is going out with the power plant next year.

ed wallace

distric heating

is alive and well in boston ma the electric utility still sells there left over steam to office buildings in and near down town in cambridge ma the electric utility recently sold the power plant to harvard university for years they sold the extra steam to harvard to heat the bussness school there is a tunnel 1/4 mile long that takes a left turn at its end and goes over the river through a pedestrain bridge the people using the bridge have no idea that the tunnel exist

To Learn More About This Contractor, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Contractor"

Aidan (UK)

District Heating

Have a look at

http://www.cd.danfoss.com/HeatingApplications/chapter2.pdf

I think there’s 8 chapters on district heating.

Also the US Army corps of Engineers have a study of efficiencies of site heat distribution using steam, MTHW and LTHW. I think the conclusions were in favour of LTHW, due to reduced temperatures and losses.


http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/techpub/CRREL_Reports/reports/CR95_18.pdf

UK systems have presently swung towards small, de-centralised boiler rooms, due to the widespread availability of natural (North Sea) gas.

BillW@honeywell

Still used in Manhattan

ConEd's Kip's Bay plant provides steam for lots of downtown buildings still, as far as I know. Nary a boiler in the basement of these huge buildings, just a humungous steam to hot water convertor & pumps. Some still have absorbers for chilled water, too. District heat is the only kind that makes sense in the "Big City". Co-op City in the Bronx also is a district heat/cool operation.

ed wallace

distrect heat

forgot to mention that a friends daughter married a man who grew up in moscow russia where distect heat is the normal he says it works ok except when its down for 2 weeks per yr for routine maintenance this could be any time between aplril 1st and october 1st the thing is there is no notice people wake up and no water thats how they find out about maintenance seems some ideas are still left over from commie rule

To Learn More About This Contractor, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Contractor"

Art Pittaway

Cooling is

a bigger subject on the web than heating. I went looking for info on Chicago's chilled water loop for downtown buildings and found Denver and a whole lot more. I believe Chicago put in a new system or upgraded the old one in the early 90's. One whole building is the chillers, towers and pumps. BAC has a nice photo of a district cooling tower on their site also.
Art

Dave_23

Still used in Detroit

I work for a large state university in Detroit, MI. We buy steam from the local utility for heating in certain buildings.

If anyone has ever seen clouds of steam emanating from manhole covers, well there you have it.

FWIW: We're occasionall asked if we'd like to purchase, for $1, abandoned steam piping and easements, under roads near our campus, for our telecommunications distribution. Although the offer is very tempting, we typically pass - potentially massive asbestos liability in the ownership of such pipes.

Tony Conner

Most...

...central station electrical generating types just roll their eyes at district heating. For them, their main gig is making power, and the district heating systems are kind of an annoying sideline that they've been roped into.

It may not be true now, but about 10 years ago, the steam system was about half of one percent of ConEd's revenue, and it wasn't really anything like their main focus.

There are some good, money making modern systems out there. A huge number of the systems though, are old, leaky-creaky asbestos covered operations, that the utilities that own them are trying to either unload, or shut down. In most cases, you need to be able to get a high price for the power generated from a gas turbine or diesel (converted to fire natural gas), then use the exhaust heat to make steam or hot water. The heat load needs to be something other than space heating, because that only really rocks about 3 or 4 months a year. Even if you've got a lot of absorption chillers for a summer steam or hot water load, you've still got about 6 months of the year that's a dead zone. You can make power, but you've got no home for the exhaust heat. And that's what makes it fly. Where this type of system works best, is an industrial process thermal load that exists year round. It's the thermal load that determines the size of the electrical side. And most plants have a much bigger electrical requirement than thermal. They start off planning a BIG generating plant to deal with their power bills, then as they crunch the numbers, the thermal side keeps making the electical generator smaller and smaller until everybody loses interest, and the project dies. I've seen THAT happen a whole bunch of times.

J.C.A.

Don't know if it's still the \"norm\".....

But being in the Coast Guard between 1981-85 , I found most of the big bases were heated in the central concept .
There were pipes running all over the place and dopey me didn't know what they were for till they gave us the tour of the "generator plant" . Then the light shined brightly .
I recently spent a couple of days at the new Buderus facility and wondered why the powerplant near the factory didn't provide the VERY nearby airport, the water from their cooling towers to snow melt the runway/s . It would give them a better way of dispersing the "wasted heat" and moving the water fast enough wouldn't be a big problem . (although my guess is the pilots restricted to visual flight rules wouldn't be so happy . The vapor shows them in REAL time which way the winds are blowing,really accurately!) With the airport being about 1/8th a mile away and about a 3/4 mile runway, why not try to figure if it's possible , and save the cost of almost all snow removal for the course of a winter.(usually a considerable amount in that area) . Seems logical to me .

Just thinking out loud . Chris

Eric

Condensate is expensive

The problems are water/condensate quality.

Condensate is expensive stuff to loose to drains and piping. Here in alaska we have a different heat recovery option.

The power plant uses combined cycle gas turbine/steam.(common) But then the first stage of the condenser is to preheat the city's drinking water supply. Our ground water is so cold 34 F that without preheating it would freeze in pipes.

My home well I get 34 F out of tap. Ice.... No thanks

J.C.A.

Eric

5' frost line and average Baseline temp around 20°I still think it would pay at least a great portion of the cost .
There is so much wasted in the "cooling towers" .

The airport is more likely than not , one of the biggest users of the electricity generated in the area . Why not let them use the "waste" for their benefit like the "cetral systems" of yore ? Sounds like a win/win to me . Most homes in the area are on wells , and their incoming water is around 50-60° even in the dead of winter. Obviously , they don't have that problem in the immediate vicinity, so why not put the waste to good use ?
As an "ironic aside" , we were told that the Buderus warehouse had to ADD heating to that part of the building as it was designed without any !Lots of boilers running in the room next to the training facility , doing snow melt and radiant for the lobbies,offices and function/lunchroom but the poor guys in the warehouse had nothing !How fair is that ?(You would think there would be radiant floors for the guys who send the equipment to all of us anyway ) They did add a pile of Modine type heaters to keep it bareable . N.H. gets a little colder than where they cast the stuff in Germany . Chris