Would you share your heating?

ed110220

I don't think it's a question of whether people do or don't want it. Clearly district heating systems can work. There's a relatively new one in Bath that is used to heat about 800 flats in the Western Riverside development. A friend who lives there has no complaints. In Iceland they use it to distribute geothermal hot water from boreholes. It seems to work fine, but the hot water does smell strongly sulfurous!

What isn't clear (and needs some strong evidence for rather than back of envelope calculations) is that a national system of heat distribution would be economic or even feasible. I would want to see some serious proposals from engineering firms, academic studies etc. That it hasn't been raised as far as I know suggests that it's pie in the sky.

Second, I'd want to see evidence that existing systems are generally cheaper than individual heating systems. Again, back of envelope calculations don't cut it. I can see they may be economic on a case-by-case basis in large, new, purpose built developments of blocks of flats like the Bath western riverside, but to suggest it's a general panacea for heating without clear evidence is foolish.

GreatApe

ed110220 wrote: »

I don't think it's a question of whether people do or don't want it. Clearly district heating systems can work. There's a relatively new one in Bath that is used to heat about 800 flats in the Western Riverside development. A friend who lives there has no complaints. In Iceland they use it to distribute geothermal hot water from boreholes. It seems to work fine, but the hot water does smell strongly sulfurous!

What isn't clear (and needs some strong evidence for rather than back of envelope calculations) is that a national system of heat distribution would be economic or even feasible. I would want to see some serious proposals from engineering firms, academic studies etc. That it hasn't been raised as far as I know suggests that it's pie in the sky.

Second, I'd want to see evidence that existing systems are generally cheaper than individual heating systems. Again, back of envelope calculations don't cut it. I can see they may be economic on a case-by-case basis in large, new, purpose built developments of blocks of flats like the Bath western riverside, but to suggest it's a general panacea for heating without clear evidence is foolish.

I don't think it would be cheaper than just keep using what we got
It's always cheaper to just keep using what exists

But this is in light of the need (or rather want) to decarb heating
So there has to a a big national change

The current plan/idea seems to be very wishful thinking
Something like 80% heat pumps 20% resistance heating
It's not thought through because although adding one heat pump to one house can be done fairly easily (if costly) doing so on a national scale will cause national problems

Try replacing 35 million gas fired boilers with 25 million heat pumps and 10 million electric boilers/tanks and see what happens to the grid. Winter peak demand would go up by 50-100GW.
You'd need a way to do seasonal storage. You'd need hydrogen chemical industry. You'd need massive additional deployment of offshore wind power. You'd need huge grid upgrades at all levels. You'd most likely need to build 50-100 large CCGTs for backup windless weeks. You'd need a lot of everything


So yes the cheapest option is just keep what exists and use that
The question though is what's better smarter effective

Distributed heating grids powered primarily by nuclear heat which is controllable
100GW winter 20GW summer

Or 35 million electric and heat pump boilers. 100GW of new CCGTs. Huge grid upgrades. 150 GW of offshore wind power to power all of the above. Hydrogen chemical industries to feed the CCGTs and a lot more

I don't expect either to be cheaper than just keep using the existing infrastructure which is 85% of heating from gas boilers. But I'd imagine a distributed heat grid to be cheaper faster better than 100% electrified heating


But having said this my best guess is that we will in fact just keep gas fired boilers for a very long time and very slowly do some conversions of gas boilers to heat pumps

edgex

GreatApe wrote: »

PasturesNew wrote: »

the reality is that having a dedicated area for such a boiler system, plus expensive maintenance and servicing and all the other "management" stuff that goes on would work out, individually, more expensive per home than each having their own heating.

If I want a boiler in my house I have an option of spending £1k, or £3k, or £10k. Such schemes tend to be managed/driven by "wealthier folks" and to tick all those green/eco friendly boxes on forms the cost goes up and up and up until you've got the Rolls Royce of heating systems being shared by 30 peasants... who are complaining they can't afford to heat their homes.[/QUOTE


Why do you think a shared system would cost more to repair or install

It's the exact same boilers being used. Only instead of 20 for 20 homes it's 2 for 20 homes

Instead of EDF selling you gas and electricity it would be EDF selling you electricity and hot water

If EDF get inefficient, say paying plumbers £1,000 per hour rather than £50 and having five layers of management rather than two then you can switch to another company who runs their affiars more efficiently. Or it can be a regulated monopoly like national grid so the regulator would set per unit prices.

:rotfl:

The only way 2 boilers per 20 homes, using the same boilers as used in an individual home, would work is if each house used heating & hot water at a set time, which was different to every other house but 1.


As for your general point, it already happens in many older blocks of apartments in the UK, & many in the US.
The issue now, & going forwards, is that new builds are much better insulated, & therefore the heating demand is vastly reduced. It's then a lot easier to just provide localised electric heating. (much easier to run slightly bigger cables than also running big insulated pipes)

joefizz

From the ages of about 10 to 17 (1980 to 1987) I lived in an experimental new build estate. The houses in the estate were centrally heated from a district boiler and as they were the equivalent of council houses the heating/hot water was included in the rent.
IIRC it worked much the same as individual boilers in that each house was pretty much individually controlled for temperature (the old folks house next door was always stifling, they were probably the heat sink for the entire operation!).
Each of the houses was prefab and each floor came on the back of a truck, was craned into position one on top of the other, bricked up the front and roof put on. I think each house took less than a week to assemble and most of that was waiting on the outside skin of bricks drying.
At the time they were probably a lot better insulated than the normal housing stock.

They are still there today, although building a major motorway link beside them wasnt the smartest idea as driving in the piling caused a few of them (including ours) to separate slightly so you could see the street outside when walking down the stairs, so major renovations were required to all as this disturbed the pipework.
Was great for us kids as during winter we could sit on the warm distribution boxes situated at the end of each row of houses.


Probably no good reason why each set of newbuilds today couldnt be the same with central dual or appropriate for the area heating. So like NY some places could be steam (depending on locally available), like Reykjavik from 20km away geothermal, ashp and thermal stores near wind turbines (or associated with wind turbines), near hydro or small hydro sites etc all with small gas or oil backups. Of course this would only really work in the UK with local non commercial ownership as most companies/developers/etc would just rip people off like they do with fixed tv/broadband/leasehold/maintenance charges etc but the principle is sound.


Electricity network is going distributed and this can be used in conjunction with district/local heating (to a lesser or greater degree) wherever possible.
It takes the political will to include in planning laws and the political will to enforce local ownership/handover.
Ive spoken to neighbours about a localised wind turbine or solar farm for the small set of local houses and whilst some are quite keen on it, its like herding cats. If it hadve been done as newbuilds as part of the greater 'estate' or colocated when the neighbourhood transformer was replaced a couple of years ago then it may just have been a case of build it and they will come.
All of the houses in this development were originally coal fired and most now have either oil or gas (originally most moved to oil, gas is only a new installation in the last 10 years or so) so adding infrastructure wasnt a big deal. Well if you consider the contractors were paid x for adding cables to a trench and 3x for digging up the trench and adding cables you can understand why they came one month to lay the broadband cables, filled it in and then a couple of months later for the gas pipes.

ABrass

District heating does make sense when designed in. Retrofitting it would be a huge challenge and seems unlikely.

It's have to be compared to the effect of Air source heat pumps and retrofitting houses to near passivhaus standards. My gut feel is that the ASHP and insulation might be the same cost but also is a lot more achievable from a project management perspective.

Mandating it for new builds could work through, but then so would mandating GSHP and passivhaus standards.