An Introduction to District Heating Systems

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District heating is the process of heating buildings by capturing waste heat from a power plant through co-generation. That heat is transmitted via steam or hot water. Many cities in the world have used this system, and it's increasingly attractive when paired with low-carbon power sources. Is steam the technology of the future?
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Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos and Hannah Woolsey
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[@Maitch3000]

What is really neat with district heating is that it is just warm water running through pipes, so you always change HOW you boil the water if another method becomes more efficient. In Denmark they are trying to install a system in which if it gets very windy and the electical price drops to next to nothing, then they switch to electrical district heating instead of burning stuff.

[@McSlobo]

In addition warm water can be used to store the energy as heat. In Finland we have huge barrels of hot water stored as a reservoirs for the case the power plant has a problem. In Helsinki there's also a massive cave underneath the city that is used for district cooling during summer and can be used as a heat reservoir during the winter. It's like artificial geothermal energy reservoir, and utilizes heat pump technology. And the craziest part is, we've not tapped to nuclear district heating, yet. Immense amounts of energy is just wasted.

[@nisseheim4996]

Very nice. Stockholm has a set of massive heat pumps using the heat in its waste water system. The optimal production mix hour by hour in a large heating system is a field of study in its own right.

[@Amir-jn5mo]

thats super cool

[@GyroCannon]

Literally the same benefit of having people adopt EVs - yeah right now most of the US's electrical generation runs on natural gas, but we can easily swap that out for wind, solar, or nuclear fusion, as opposed to a ton of combustion engines roaming around

[@jonathanodude6660]

@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 have you been paying attention to anything happening "worldwide"? chinas coal shortage was because a *right-wing* australian government suggested an investigation into the origins of covid. china responded by blocking food, fuel and material imports from australia, crippling their output and causing severe food shortages that led to their food wastage laws. energy operators in china couldnt care less for the "bottom line", theyre state funded. if they have no coal because the government isnt importing enough or directing any to them, they cannot run coal fired plants. blaming the failures of authoritarian (see: right wing) governments on left-wingers isnt a good look.

[@swmike]

I was involved in building a data center in Stockholm, Sweden, and already 20 years ago there was district cooling that we used for primary cooling of the facility. We received 4-8 °C water and had to warm it before it was returned, and then this was used via heat pump to help produce district heating for other buildings. Back in the 70ties there was also plans to use nuclear power plant waste heat for district heating, since they produce enormous amounts of waste heat, I hope we look into this more going forward. Cogeneration is extremely efficient, generate both power and heat in the same plant, using most of the energy available.

[@placeholdername0000]

Ågesta produced district heating AFAIK.

[@swmike]

@@placeholdername0000 This was very close to Solnaverket.

[@TheAmericanCatholic]

Im guess using nuclear waste heat is seen as scary because of the anti nuclear crowd.

[@laurencefraser]

@@TheAmericanCatholic pretty sure no one has a problem with waste Heat that is incidentally from a nuclear plant. The 'anti nuclear crowd', that part with any actual influence anyway, is generally rather more concerned with the downsides of putting a nuclear plant anywhere near a population centre in the first place. And the ones making actually sensible arguments are fully aware that a properly functioning and maintained nuclear plant is actually Less dangerous, radiation wise, than a coal plant in the same condition (they don't want Those anywhere near population centres Either), the concern is that if a Coal plant fails... you get a steam explosion and a fire. Bad, but design can render the explosion sufficiently non dangerous to the surrounding area, and a fire is a fire, cities have to deal with those anyway, and have been forever. You take what measures you can to prevent it then send in the firefighters to deal with anything that overcomes it. A nuclear plant failing is rather more catastrophic. Yes, yes, make all the arguments you like about modern nuclear plants not failing ... they always end in 'so long as the people in charge (and certain key workers) aren't the sort of idiots who disable important safety features or refuse to pay for necessary upgrades or maintenance' which basically invalidates the entire argument because it doesn't matter if it's a corporation or a government entity, that absolutely WILL happen eventually. Too many perverse inscentives encouraging it. And that's before acounting for potential sabotage. At this point, if you found a practical way to stick a nuclear plant on essentially a raft sufficiently far out to sea (and somewhere suitable wind wise) while still getting the power back for use (and built it with all appropriate safety measures etc.), very few people would actually have a problem with it (well, in and of itself. Political propaganda is always a thing one needs to account for). And a few countries have enough empty space and suitable geography (without endangered species that people care about living there) that would be equally suitable. But no one half way aware of how humans work wants one anywhere near where they live, work, etc., and it's not just NIMBYism or ignorant fear of nuclear power in general. It's more similar to how people often don't want to live down stream of hydroelectric plants (well, maybe WAY down stream).

[@McSlobo]

This is an important comment. Data centers are great for district heating. Practically all the energy needed to move bits in computers can be re-used as heat. Super efficient. Other industrial systems can also be used for heating. In Finland this means e.g. pulp mills, which can also produce electricity.

[@joshinio]

I used to work for a major energy supplier that invested in district heating so, to me, this is the sexiest topic you’ve ever talked about

[@newsaxonyproductions7871]

Is that, uh... the *best* way to describe a city planning topic? Lol

[@fl0pZ3]

@@newsaxonyproductions7871 *yes.*

[@desarij]

Lol

[@onelyone6976]

Here in Finland district heating is the norm in cities, up to 90% of buildings use it and in the entire country 46% of all buildings are heated with district heating. Up to 95% of new apartment buildings are also connected to district heating.

[@Karjis]

Some buildings are leaving the district heating network in favour of ground source heat pumps as some cities have issues keeping district heating costs under control or some heating companies show quick price increases. Tech is great but some companies simply ruin the great idea by failing in pricing.

[@mrwess1927]

@@Karjis middlemen taking their cut

[@Karjis]

@@mrwess1927 that is one part yes, another is the quite high cost of the grid itself. It makes sense in dense urban environment, but when basically creating one more grid with power, sewer and water to residential areas it's not that cheap. Some district heat companies also have the pricing model built so that they clearly do not want to keep small customers. In example quite high monthly fee and low'ish energy based fee.

[@kerrryschultz2904]

@@Karjis Have you heard of Polar Night Energy that uses a large insulated sand mass to store heat for months and recovered when needed to produce cogeneration. In summer when they have excess wind and solar electricity it heats the sand.

[@PhilfreezeCH]

My parents were recently connected to their district heating system and its great! For one, no more boiler maintenance which means the cost-of-living is way more predictable (you will never have to replace your heating system for a lot of money, instead it is just a monthly fee like electricity. Additionally, they gained a whole ass room in their house since they don‘t need the big and bulky heating system anymore. The best thing is of course that the district heating system uses an energy mix and as long as the temperatures aren‘t too low it can run solely on renewables (in-ground heat pumps and geothermal) and only if the heating demand is high enough will it turn on the oil and wood pellet burners. The local government also only connect you to the district heating system if you agree to improve your home insulation, which is done via a credit that you pay off over the monthly fees for the next 20 years, meaning it is actually super affordable.

[@McSlobo]

And imagine that the power plant can reach 90+% efficiency compared to the ~40% of a good normal one. Isn't that amazing.

[@DrSeaLionMD]

Do you know if it difficult to connect to the municipal system?

[@twestgard2]

That requires trusting that the source of heat won’t jack the rate through the roof once you’re connected. Which isn’t a good bet.

[@MegaBanane9]

@@twestgard2 I'd assume it's not the US and also not a private company, but one held by the local government. Makes price increases like that very unlikely.

[@twestgard2]

@@MegaBanane9 Yes, the US is definitely the worst in this way. That said, English water companies are privatized and the English have also had some really nasty problems with providing electricity to homes of poor people lately, aggressively shutting people off and even home invasions by the utilities to do shutoffs and change the meters. So unfortunately it’s not limited to the US and there’s a lot of political pressure to expand this system elsewhere.

[@SIC647]

On the island of Fyn (Funen), Denmark, the big district heating power plant is so versatile in what it uses to generate heat, that prices have become *lower* this half year. Yes, despite everything. It was a huge relief, and shows the resilience of the system. They use waste, straw, hot water from data centres and other factories, heat from green houses, and also some coal.

[@DaDunge]

I have heard rumors tey will allow the fluctuating prices to go negative in summers in Sweden because of the amount of counter pressure (Heat that industry sell into the disctrict heating grid) they are getting. Probably not fully negative but they may allow use to offset the grid cost.

[@ramsuslaansalu5137]

As an engineer and a fan of urban design, these kind of videos are some of my favourite! Keep up the good work ☺️

[@danrobrish3664]

When I lived in New Ulm, Minnesota, in the 1990s, they had a district heating system for the downtown buildings. The city-owned public utilities had a cogeneration plant that burned natural gas to make both electricity for the town and steam for the downtown district heating area. Pretty remarkable for a small town like that and might be worth looking into -- maybe a video about small towns doing unusual things with utilities.

[@OutdoorLonghair]

Wow I've lived in the county next to New Ulm all my life and had no idea they have district heating. Thanks for giving me something to look into.

[@JasonSleiman4thewin]

They had this type of heating at my college Michigan State University. The funny thing was that the schools powerplant was built when electrical demand was much lower than it is today so now the power plant makes too much heat and the buildings are too hot in the winter. I had to keep the window open in my door room in the winter because it was too hot inside

[@AlRoderick]

Open the windows in winter? Spartans will.

[@TribulationsSolo]

You have no way of controlling the amount of heat going to the rooms ?

[@AlRoderick]

@@TribulationsSolo no, no thermostat valves or anything, at least not that's adjustable by the residents

A simple TRV (thermostatic radiator valve) on each radiator would suffice and save a lot of energy.

[@richarddamecour1088]

That is a control issue in the building - District Heating systems only provide as much or little heat as the building calls for.

[@Hollandstation]

Great video! There should be more roofs in cities open to the public. the views are sometimes really great

[@siefer117]

The assumption is people will jump off. Same reason you can't open hotel windows in Vegas. Also "why use the roof when there's so much space on the ground level?"

[@dutchuncle2716]

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn. Burn, motherfucker, burn.

[@skyfeelan]

@@siefer117 except that there isn't a lot of ground space in europe

[@siefer117]

@@skyfeelan There is in the Americas

[@CorePathway]

That thumbnail is just silly; drawn by a non-golfer. Talk about a killer slice 😮😮😂

[@scottydude456]

Living in New York City, seeing steam hissing from the ground and the tall orange pipes almost every day, I never realized that that was so unique to my city!

[@Jablicek]

I lived with district heating the entire time living in Czechia. Pros: very cheap hot water, never needed to turn the radiators on as the transport pipes running through the flat did all the heating necessary, water was always hot enough to use. Cons: if you use more than your allotted share it's very expensive, two weeks of no hot water in summer while the plant undergoes maintenance (and other off periods where work is required). All in all, it's a big thumbs up from me and worth the occsional inconvenience.

[@placeholdername0000]

The two week cut off is easily solved by having multiple plants.

[@Psi-Storm]

@@placeholdername0000 New systems usually have heat storage tanks as fallback that can store the needed heat for a winter day or two. Those would easily cover the hot water requirement for 1-2 weeks in the summer. If the main generator doesn't come back up within a day, they can order mobile heat generators, that heat up that intermediate storage, so the customers don't have suffer the heat blackout. Alternatively you install a 300L hot water tank that is heated by the district heating, with electric or gas fallback.

[@BLY99]

That's really weird, here in the Netherlands district heating is a complete failure, more expensive than gas and needs constant work to keep working. People that have it, hate it.

[@McSlobo]

Propose them to build a heat accumulator / battery into the district heating grid. We have them in Finland - for example some decommissioned 190 000 m3 oil reservoir - with perhaps some added insulation. Just fill it with the network juice and heat it when there's less need for heat in the grid - or energy is cheap otherwise. Then, when there's extremely cold period, the plant is broken, or whatever, use the stored energy in grid. So, it balances production and consumption, and can be used as an emergency spare energy reserve.

[@Aedar]

I'm guessing Prague? I never understood that 2 week pause, I also live in czech rep. and have district heating, but different city so we never have these long breaks, just the occasional maintenance check, maybe twice per year for a few hours and usually during the day when most people are at work anyway... As for the allotted share, either that's another Prague speciality or it was something with your utilities company or your apartment building, I don't have anything like that...

[@METRO6]

Toronto has a large district heating and cooling system in its downtown core operated by a company called Enwave. In fact Toronto has the worlds largest "lake powered cooling system", the Deep Lake Water Cooling system (DLWC) which draws water from the bottom of Lake Ontario to cool various hospitals, businesses, data centres, residences, government buildings, offices, and other special places like the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and Scotiabank Arena.

[@bm8641]

Has Lake Ontario's mean temperature stopped going up?

[@buggo6]

My city has added heat pumps to its waste water treatment system, extracting heat from the waste water before it's sent out in nature. Taking the waste water from 12 C degrees to 3 C degrees, and adding the heat to the district heating. They also added a heat storage for the warmer periods of the year, to use in the winter.

[@etbadaboum]

Which city please? Thanks.

[@mateuszlaskowski3123]

Interesting, how do you store heat for have or even quarter of a year to wait for longer periods??

[@DaDunge]

I think the word you're looking for is heat exchanger not heat pump.

[@etbadaboum]

@@DaDunge In that case, the waste water wouldn't cool as much as 3°C, or that means that the ambiant water temperature is that low but I highly doubt it.

[@DaDunge]

@@etbadaboum No heat exchangers cna operate at much higher echange rates than that. A heat pump is just a heat exchanger and a fan (two fans?).

[@hardyorange]

This is so cool, and indeed I had never heard of "district heating" before! You even anticipated and answered my question about if district cooling was also a possibility! It's nice to hear about the neat things different times and places have done to improve life while reducing the net need for non-renewable fuel.

[@JakeobE]

This is so coolth* ;D

[@DaDunge]

An even cooler thing is counterpressure, that is instead of district cooling industires who would need district cooling puts their heat into the district heating grid so people can buy it to heat their houses. I guess it could be done the other way around in hot places, industries who need heat could pull it from the grid using a heat exchanger and electricity and the cold water they generate cool people's houses.

[@luissg1228]

I'm glad your channel brought this topic, which is usually overlooked by policy makers. Hopefully this will take more importance as energy consumption awareness grows.

[@trygveevensen171]

FYI, district heating is used here in Norway as well, but not to the same extent as in a lot of other places. It's mainly used in the larger cities near large industrial sites and waste to energy plants. Currently it provides about 10% of heating nationwide.

[@DaDunge]

I mean one could combine geothermal heating with renewable energy to provide contrla heating. You have a lot of mountaints to take heat from, and a lot of renewable energy. Electric radiators are very inefficient.

[@krazoe6258]

District cooling is such a neat idea! I'm slapping my forehead wondering why I didn't ever think of this! In Scandinavia and Germany (yes, also Norway) we have district heating in a lot of places. Suffice it to say, those countries are very good at dealing with the cold. However, in the winter, our radiators are completely empty and useless, whilst the temperatures frequently go above 30 degrees celsius with no AC anywhere. This lack of AC actually leads to some increase in mortality and is stupidly uncomfortable. Maybe the solution to the problem is literally in front of our eyes, and all we have to do is convert our radiators from warmth generation to cooling units. That could massively improve quality of life in the summer!

[@Free-g8r]

It's not that straightforward unfortunately. For cooling you need to blow over the coils. And there will be condensation on the coils. So you need a resistant material (most older radiators are cast iron, which isn't suitable) and also a means of draining the condensate away.

[@jaxvoice718]

Norway is far behind Sweden in district heating (10% vs 50% of homes heated by it respectively), but on par or better with district cooling, possibly because Norway is a relatively newcomer to district heating, and this is a newer idea. A disadvantage though is that district heating serves two purposes, heating homes and heating water. So, given that most systems use two pipes, one for the hot water, one for the return water, when the system changes from heating to cooling, recipients lose the remote hot water. It could be fixed with three pipes (main two, plus extra hot water in summer), or simply by also having local water heaters. Less hot water is used in summer anyway.

[@jaxvoice718]

@@Free-g8r Cooling can be had by remote heat pumps, like you describe. That's not how it is done in Scandinavia though, where most everyone live near the ocean (failing that, a lake). On the sea floor the water is likely to hold 4°C all year round, so a simple heat exchanger (two closed loops of pipes) transfers coolth from the sea to the district heating (now cooling) system. As sea water is corrosive, you don't want that sloshing around the city anyway.

[@krazoe6258]

​@@jaxvoice718 Well, I grew up with radiators everywhere in Oslo, maybe something changed in ten years. Oslo has projects that directly translate to "distant heat" (fjernvarme) which is as described in the video. So it's not unheard of.

[@krazoe6258]

@@Free-g8r It's interesting to think about though, and I'm sure there are solutions. For example, you might avoid the condensation issue by running the water at a higher temperature (15 degrees vs 4 degrees). As for air movement being required this is a good point that I didn't think of. Maybe a retrofitted fant at the bottom of the radiators could do the trick? Applying the principles used to water cool a PC at large scale would be funny.

[@CharliMorganMusic]

I would absolutely love this. I live in a Northern city in the US and it just makes sense. It gets cold as hell here and we really need industrial-sized solutions to how many homes need so much heat.

[@DomestosMaximus]

Oh district heating is definitely sexy alright. As you mentioned Denmark as an example, what makes co-generation and district heating even more interesting is the fact that danish plants often use large hot water tanks adjacent to co-generative power plants in order to balance the electricity production. The whole act of grid balancing becomes much more fun when you have plenty of installed capacity coming from windmills and you need to be able to balance it all with everything you have. It's a nice way to create super cheap (sometimes free) heat on particularly windy days.

[@mikoajchudzikowski5818]

You can also produce biogas in a water treatment facility and then burn this gas for district heating system thus reduce the methane emissions from the water treatment process and have a renewable fuel for dustrict heating. This has proven to work in places like Denmark or Sweden. In my hometown (Tychy, Poland) we also have something like this but just for a part of the city.

[@jinxbeecee]

I live in Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark, and our heat is also distributed as district heating. We have a large facility on the northern outskirts of the city, which used to burn coal, but has since switched to biofuel.

[@LisaBeergutHolst]

I went to a college that had district heating via steam. You could see where the steam pipes ran under the sidewalks because the snow always melted there first ❄️💧

[@64ankka]

Finland has several cities where this is done intentionally. Heating water that has circulated via houses and is being pumped back to the power station is channeled via sidewalks or a pedestrian street, which melts the snow and ice so people can walk there without fear of slipping.

[@CyanideCarrot]

My campus did this accidentally at first, but now it's part of the guidelines for any new building to have steam heating next to doors and any new pathways where a connection is available

[@thuewhrens7631]

The most interresting thing I have seen about the danish district heating, is that they have begun to connect industrial buildings that produces heat asweel as supermarkets where they have fridges and freezers. Which is a really awesome way to fully use all potential energi being produced

[@Krydolph]

yeah... that is only a half truth after its been through a PR machine! I do actually work a place where we provide heating to half the town, heat that was previously wasted, a lot of steam and such is used on this factory. However, it is something that is done with a dispensation, a "pilot project" and the few other places similar things are done, that is case too. It is infact illegal to provide waste heat as district heating, and to get dispensation takes a lot of money and time. Many have given up trying to provide their waste heat, and has to just "flush it out" I DO hope rules will change - The funny thing is, this is what comes from embracing capitalism, everything should be free market - until the capitalists feel they are ones loosing and can't compete, then it should rather be illegal! (I do support capitalism, mostly, but stuff like "We can't do this obviously good thing because that means someone can't make a huge profit on the service then" is not something I support!

[@purecommonsense1]

I did my final year urban planning thesis on solid waste reduction and management so this topic is awesome!

[@ericlotze7724]

I’d love more content on this!

[@ericlotze7724]

I personally find all the “chemical recycling” really neat; incineration with ash refining (or just usage of pure biomass ash as fertilizer (biomass origin ash return or BOAR as i call it)), Gasification with Slag Usage, Pyrolysis/Hydrothermal Gasification and usage of all that.

[@ericlotze7724]

Also *if you ate comfortable of course* can you link to your paper, I’d love to read it!

[@rushelm8101]

What I love about this video is that men are so engaged in it (comments). The wonderful comments here prove that there is more than a spark of hope for our power needs going forward. Keep innovating and remain engaged you wonderful people!

[@Donzemiaky]

City planning grad student here, about to write a thesis on district heating in Glasgow! District heating is the future for sure

[@thomasawdffaw123]

always learning something new. Awesome video!

[@0xCAFEF00D]

My family home got district heating in the early 00s. Good time to have it right now.

[@sabrinadequincy9177]

This is such an interesting video! I wonder how many small American cities could use District Heating. but... did you have to remind me of that traumatic scene from ToyStory 3? like dayum.

[@PixelatedLlama]

We have America's second biggest district heating system in Downtown Indianapolis. The power plant whose steam is distributed through Downtown is near the Colts' stadium, so the smokestacks were beautified by being painted blue and white.

[@jaxvoice718]

The ongoing energy crisis is making us more creative in Europe. Waste heat is a resource, but has often been treated as a problem. Not only can we get a lot of useful district heating from power plants, like nuclear or bioenergy/waste incinerators, industry too can produce and take advantage of heat "recycling", both producing and consuming. A data centre may produce low grade heat, a steel mill high grade heat, far from any urban centre. But this cheap heat can be useful for e.g. indoor farming that uses considerable heat especially in winter, or other heat-intensive production, e.g. glass making.

[@matthewdew9475]

I'm currently a graduate student at Cornell and when I saw this video posted, I was hoping I might better understanding how the project with Cayuga worked. I was pleasantly surprised to see it made a cameo! Thanks for all your videos.

[@homyce]

Visited Copenhill in the summer, an awesome place.

[@thomaswalters7117]

Pretty great video! It's also good to point out that a REALLY efficient steam power plants have thermal efficiencies of 30%-40%, while cogeneration can easily hit above 90%. Currently, most of the energy we use for electricity is wasted as heat, and we should be capturing that for use in buildings during the cold months (and perhaps trying to store it in the summer, but I don't have high hopes for that being an efficient use of space).

[@QuesoCookies]

Reykjavik's district heating provides heat to almost the city, which is 60% of Iceland's entire population. Volcanic geothermal is a pretty rare luxury, but it's still inspiring that they're using it to provide such a high standard of living to so much of their country instead of squirreling it away.

[@DaDunge]

Well volcanoes make geothermal more effective but it's not nessecery for geothermal energy, anywwhere where there is bedrock you cna do geothermal energy.

[@A51Rene]

Here in the Netherlands these systems are quite widespread. I am using it ("stads warmte") myself and its great. It negates the need to buy a central gas heater ("CV") or a heat pump myself, so there is no upfront cost. Downside is the lack of competition and monopoly position of the commercial company providing the system to the municipality. Prices are regulated, but you are stuck with one supplier without and choice

[@Felix-nz7lq]

We do have some limited district heating in Oslo and Trondheim although you're overall right it's fairly limited elsewhere in Norway

[@chrdal]

Indeed! I have it here in Trodheim. I think all (or most) new apartment buildings are required to connect to it.

[@DaDunge]

@@chrdal Makes sense, even with renewable electricity, electric radiators are very ineffective.

[@andypierce6593]

Really interesting, and more pervasive than I guessed. Also, by the way, I really appreciate that you seem to strike a tone that focuses on information and presenting an entire picture.

[@85aksiznarf]

The most fascinating thing in that regard is cold district heating. I was recently able to have a guided tour through such a system at the ETH-Campus in Zurich.

[@matthiashesse1996]

There's also a concept called "cold district heating" which, at first, sounds kind of wrong. But basically it's like district heating, but with cooler water (about 5-20° C). The water is then used to run a water-water or water-air heatpump. The advantages of this concept are: you don't need to insulate the pipes carrying the water as well as for a district heating system, you lose less heat on transport, you can use heat sources that would not be hot enough for district heating (eg. server room waste heat), there are many different ways to get your water/heat source (lakes, rivers, geothermal, water cooling systems...), you can store energy by storing warm water in caverns and stuff like this and the heat pumps work more consistently and efficient than air-air heatpumps as the delta between the heat source and the wanted temperature could be smaller during the winter.

[@McSlobo]

Interesting, but you can also store the near-boiling water in caverns or tanks. It's a typical technology used to balance the consumption and also as backup. Of course there are backup plants in the grid too, often more polluting so not used regularly.

[@DaDunge]

The pipes are fairly well insulated in the ground though I think what you lose in economies of scale is more than what you gain in not losing to heat bleeding from the pipes. A bigger heat exhanges is generlaly more ffective thana smaller one.

[@mattcraftien974]

In France, sometime the heat of nuclear power plant are used to heat the greenhouses because although you could probably safely put the power plant in the middle of a city and use the heat to warm the city, people are not fan of nuclear power in their backyard.

[@laurencefraser]

nuclear power is precisely as safe as those in charge of it are trustworthy and compitent. Given how often both corporations and government entities have perverse inscentives encouraging bad practice, and given the consequences of a failure? It's entirely reasonable not to want such a thing anywhere near you (or, for that matter, upwind of you). Doesn't matter how safe the design is when everything's in good repair and everyone is doing their jobs properly, it matters how safe it is when that's NOT the case. Coal plant? Steam explosion that probably doesn't do much to the surrounding area, and a regular fire (which, well, cities have systems in place for dealing with That already). Nuclear plant? Much bigger deal. Mind you, no one wants a coal plant anywhere near their house if they can help it Either, given the smoke and the fact that the things put out a mildly concerning amount of radiation in the course of normal operation (more so than a nuclear plant, in fact). Gas is, of course, less bad, but still not the greatest thing ever. And, of course, no one wants to live immediately down stream of a hydroelectric plant. Wind is Less bad, but the noise is still an issue. No one cares about living near photovoltaic cells, heck, they'll stick 'em on their houses, but those have their own downsides, and using mirrors and lensese to focus solar energy to drive a steam turbine takes up a tonne of space and actually screws up local weather patterns (for much the same reason as cities, particularly those full of excessive amounts of road and carparks, do, only much, much more so) and are rather bad for birds that make the mistake of flying through the beam. And those idiots trying to bill Orbital Power Transmiters as the solution to 'clean energy' generation... they're litterally dumping heat that would Miss the earth otherwise, Onto the Surface of the earth (kind of the oposite of the desired result) in the form of what amounts to a Giant Doom Laser (well, not Technically a laser, but functionally indistinguishable in effect)... ... if a person can't see the ways for THAT to go horribly wrong (both with and without bad actors involved) they have no business being involved in any project that might possibly have the capacity to actually implement the thing. ... Though they're at least right that it wouldn't be producing much of anything in the way of greenhouse gases.

[@kjetilbalog]

Living in one of the few areas in Norway with a district heating network, I can attest to it's greatness. Fueled by wood pellets from a sawmill this facility provides some 5000 residents with cheap and stable heating throughout the colder months.

[@ungesalsa2554]

Norway actually has district heating as well. I live in Stavanger, Norway and unfortunately our brand new $200+ million recycling facility that used to provide district heating to Norway's largest business area (and surrounding houses) burned down summer 2022. Parts of it still works but its output is significantly reduced. Geothermal district heating is also not uncommon here.

[@tubros]

There is another level to this, in Sweden at least, large furnaces etc. from industry are connected to provide heat to municipal heating. The industry sell the heat to the city network instead of venting it all to waste. And the city don't need to burn something on their own to provide the heat. If there is one industry in a village or small town, they often are the solve heating provider. So central heating is not just for cities. And this is the reason Sweden import garbage, due to recycling we no longer generate enough domestic garbage to fuel the heating plants.

[@DaDunge]

It's called district heating counterpressure I think.

[@DanielLoganGames]

The apartment building I work at in Portland OR sort of has district cooling. Our air conditioning system uses chilled water from infrastructure on a building across the street. Several buildings in the area use this chilled water plant. Our heating is just electric though.

[@Silk_WD]

There's a big district heating project starting in my town to connect the district heating systems of the central city and the port suburb. This at the same time as the battery factory being built is connected as a heat producer. The other main heating sources is a smelting plant and a cogeneration plant run on peat and sawmill waste. Though they are going to stop using peat in the coming years. Also the return heat of the system is used to heat and de-ice the main pedestrian streets in town.

[@rabbit251]

I believe the city where I live in Tokyo uses "district heating." Next to our recycling center is also our sports center. I see material going into the recycling center, but I never see anything come out. I've been told they run an incinerator but like this place, there is almost no smoke. The heat is used to heat the swimming pool next door in the sports center.

[@murdelabop]

Hillsborough Community College, in Tampa, Florida, has a district cooling system, and provides chilled water to the surrounding buildings.

[@DIYRandomHackery]

cal poly slo used to have a steam heating system. Steam unfortunately corrodes its piping really quickly. They were in the process of upgrading to hot water when I graduated.

[@ph11p3540]

My city has a university and hospital campus that not only have a district heating but district air conditioning system. We have both steam and cold brine piping

[@urbanfile3861]

6:01 is a demonstration in Milan, Italy. Talking about Milan, it has the biggest heating -and cooling- web system in Italy. According to the website of the company which owns the facilities more than 220.000 apartments are connected. There are various plants, but the main one is a waste plant North West of the city - Figino - which is a cogeneration plant. But the company also purchases heath by industrial installations which generate heath by their manufacturing process that otherwise would be lost.

[@wowJhil]

Yay, you even have Ludvika in this one! Not far from where I'm from :) From what I know, many towns around here use heat from big industry to heat households.

[@hedgehog3180]

You did forget to mention one part of why district heating is so genius, it doesn't just collect waste heat from power plants, it collects waste heat from all sources, which can make it essentially free. It's extremely easy to install heat exchangers into any factory or server farm so for that reason it's often done and by doing so you're often providing a valuable service to those industries since they have a need to cool down their machinery.

[@DaDunge]

Well you still have to pay the grid cost, as fara s I know they've never ever allowed the market price to dip into negatives.

[@thomasgade226]

The fundamental Laws of Thermodynamics is the reason that thermal powerplants MUST waste 40-60% of the input energy as low-temperature heat to the surroundings. This may as well heat buildings, swimmingpools etc.

[@korianderbadger]

I wish you'd mentioned the Haiyang nuclear power plant in China, which currently provide massive district heating!

[@mattcraftien974]

In France, we do that for greenhouses, but power plants are in rural area, so you can't do it for houses

[@user-bc7cb8uu7e]

In Seattle, Amazon's headquarters buildings are heated using water that cools a data center. Pretty cool

[@ChadBlevins]

Look at the Whisper Valley community near Austin TX - 2000 acres master developed - using district geothermal hybrid system with ground source heat pumps - for cooling and heating.

[@fannyandersson3330]

District heating is very common in Sweden since a long time. It also provides hot tap water

[@toolsteel8482]

When I was stationed at Fort Richardson ,Alaska in the eighties, they had a central steam plant to heat all the buildings on post. At the time , coal was delivered by the Alaska R.R. I think they may have switched to natural gas.

[@mikepictor]

I have this in my apartment building (Amsterdam) and I didn't fully understand it at first. They told me that my heating came from city systems, and all I could hear was "We pipe in your heat", and it sounds like nonsense to me. However as gas prices are skyrocketing, my relatively low heating bill is the envy of some of my work colleagues.

[@zacharyhenderson2902]

There was a small American brick making town that originally had a district heating system plan. Even the streets were supposed to be heated in the 1850s.

[@b127_1]

The problem with district heating is that it often is surprisingly expensive for households. Here in the netherlands, the price district heating companies can charge is linked to the price of natural gas, which means that high gas prices mean expensive district heating as well. For some, it gets so expensive that it is cheaper to use a heatpump instead, which seems a bit silly for waste heat.

[@laurencefraser]

given how cheap heatpumps are to run, I would have expected that to be the baseline to compare to to begin with

[@josephfisher426]

@@laurencefraser If the price of electricity is ALSO essentially determined by the price of natural gas, the heat pump gets smacked too.

[@mathematicalmatt]

I live in Utah Valley (Salt Lake Valley's little brother to the south) and we've got a relatively new natural gas power plant in the middle of the valley. Every winter morning there's a huge column of steam (and CO2, let's be honest) rising from it forming an artificial cloud that can be seen all over the valley. I know that the exhaust steam from the combustion reaction isn't the water used in district heating, but seeing the steam column everyday makes me think about the missed opportunity to build that plant as a cogen facility. Unfortunately, Utahans are addicted to their natural gas home furnaces and cooking ranges.

[@definitelynotacrab7651]

Really cool, I never actually heard about these systems before this video.

[@TherconJair]

Switzerland uses the same practice of refuse incineration plants to create district heating. There is an older one a couple kilometers away from where I live. It is up for modernisation and will be resized as there's less incinerable waste being produced. The local green party launched an initiative to use the modernisation for an upgrade to co-generation. It was approved by over 75% of voters. Our municipality sadly hasn't yet joined the future district heating network, but there wasn't yet a vote on it.

[@t0n0k0]

Someone mentioned this video from The Tim Traveller video about the skislopepowerplanttrailpark. Idk how I missed this on before.

[@lunatik9696]

electricity is the least thermally efficient to heat, unless it is free. Warming water or similar liquid for radiant heating is a great solution. Nashville, TN had a thermal waste conversion plant to heat downtown government buildings. It was very productive and down town loved it. It was sold off to commercial developers shortly after becoming profitable.

[@milesirby3132]

Everytime I see the “Everyday” poster and RT sign in the back I smile. I’m sad they took that sign down and demolished the building here in Sac.

[@dcseain]

Reston Lake Anne Air Conditioning Corporation (RELAC) has been providing cooling to roughly 300 homes in the original part of Reston VA for about 55 years.

[@nathanngumi8467]

Very interesting! Multiple experiments for building heating should be run simultaneously for good comparisons e.g. cogeneration, waste-to-energy, renewables, etc..

[@petergambrill]

I am on a communal heating network - a central gas boiler for four apartment blocks in my case. Unfortunately it's pretty useless. Only 30% of the gas burnt turns into heat in our homes. So our operator takes their cost for gas in £/kWh and divides it by 0.3 to calculate our unit rate. This means I'm currently paying £0.46/kWh of heat, which is so high I can't afford to use it and have reverted to my back up electric immersion heater for hot water and just don't turn on the central heating.

[@frankgrima]

Here in SF and SD have some forms of district heating , the SD central courthouse (union and B street) use some district heating.

[@sophiazel-jensen1809]

As someone who lives in an area where distric heating is a standard it is great that it is getting more regonision. I assumed it was a fancy thing to have a furnace in your home cause I never saw one

[@adamkeifenheim1727]

District heating is exciting!

[@pappamurphy99678]

holy cow ive always wondered what those nyc smoke stacks are for. thank you mr. beautiful

[@Homer-OJ-Simpson]

This is a topic that is not discussed enough in environmental discussions. Great video. The only place in the US I was aware had it was manhattan and college campuses. It’s good to see more are looking into it today.

[@antarktiida]

waste-to-energy plants like the one in Copenhagen have been criticized for their reliance on residents generating constant high amounts of waste which is not great for sustainability considering that the main advice for waste issues is "create less waste". building a big plant might mean that importing waste becomes necessary bc eventually the waste feedstock will diminish

[@TheLiamster]

Thanks for the gold star, I’m happy to have one

[@haisheauspforte1632]

In my city more than half of the buildings use district heating already, but most of the energy comes from a gas plant so still not perfect, in another city in our state it is over 95% so we have a lot of room for improvement

[@tomreingold4024]

I love the topics of heating and energy.

[@jackbrown8052]

This is an advanced version of the method used to provide heat in the USSR. In the USSR in many buildings there was no heating system in buildings. The heat was generated somewhere else and piped to surrounding buildings. Obviously this is a more advanced version however if the building supplying the heat goes down for whatever reason the heat in many local buildings also goes down.

[@mdhazeldine]

Great topic. This is one area where the UK really needs to up it's game. We only have 2% of our buildings currently connected to district heating systems, but have the potential to connect 50% of them! This may be one of the few areas where the U.S. is more advanced than us (with respect to something related to the environment).

[@Weissenschenkel]

When I lived in SPb-Russia, in an old building from Soviet times, we had heating from a facility close the building, in the same island.

[@erl004]

Great video about district heating. As district heating matures and lower temperatures in distribution networks makes it possible to utilize low temperature geothermal energy to heat the water in the district heating system, new sources of energy are being introduced. In the second largest city in Denmark Innargi and the district heating company Kredsloeb are developing the worlds largest geothermal district heating system. Super cool. When online 36000 houses will be heated by almost 100% emission free geothermal heat.

[@alfredolumba7936]

My god I never thought I’d see a district hearing video lol. I work and live in the Texas Medical Center (largest medical conglomerate in the country) in Houston and the whole place and few businesses are heated and cooled by District heating and cooling! It’s called Thermal energy corporation (TECO). As well Downtown Houston has district cooling as well!

[@cindykandolf7574]

Hey, we do so use district heating in Norway! The source of the heat is just an incinerator rather than a power plant. I used to live in a suburb in Trondheim that had district heating and hot water. Now I live in Oslo, and am looking at a move in the near future. I would consider district heating a plus for our future apartment!

[@majorfallacy5926]

I work for an electiricty/heating provider and I have 2 things to add: - waste incineration doesn't provide anywhere near enough heat on its own. We burn pretty much all municipal trash and even in a mild winter like right now we get somewhere around 10% of our heat from waste, with far from 100% coverage. Waste incineration also needs additional fuel to burn properly. It's a nice addon, but not a solution to the energy crisis. - Piping capacity is a major issue, arguably the most important one. Low capacity means you need higher temperatures, which makes renewable heat sources like heat pumps and geothermal plants inefficient (also applies to thermal plants but to a lesser degree), and adding more is hard because you'd need to dig up half the city. And we're already lucky to have heavily invested into district heating in the past, most cities have even higher costs.

[@Marco-yn6wj]

I think u should talk about the car free village in Brazil called Abraao, its in a island called Ilha Grande! I already visited there and its great to visit a car free place!

[@jestinmathew4503]

Hi Dave. Can you make a video on how good city planning helps in law enforcement or any video which relates city planning and law enforcement?

[@Phantisma09]

Had to pause to tell you I laughed at the "The first district heating was in Pompeii" 🤣

[@kiewies]

I loved this topic! Also, "coolth"?? Learned a new word haha

[@josecarvajal6654]

Me living in tropics but still watching this video because City Beutiful

[@TomGeller]

I live directly across a street (well, a canal) from the city heating plant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It's in the dense center of town, yet has a surprisingly small footprint. I pay an estimated amount (€200) each month to the landlord; I assume the building as a whole is billed. My radiators have little meters on them, so ostensibly I'll receive a bill or refund corresponding to the amount that I personally used. I've only been here a few months, though; I think they work it out annually. Anyway, from my point of view it works like any other radiator, with an on/off knob. Seems to function just fine.

[@ericlotze7724]

What is the maintenance like? Especially with those “pre-insulated pipes” you mentioned, is it akin to standard District Potable Water / Reclaimed Water Plumbing for the most part?

[@klapiroska4714]

Maintenance of district heating systems is relatively similar to the maintenance of water/sewer lines. Sure, there are some differences (you really don't want to release boiling hot water, as it literally can burn you to death), but you really don't want to be in contact with sewage either, (due to bio hazard), or let contamination in water pipes.

[@Phol]

2:25 this pipe comes from two local electro-heating plant to heat almost entire two cities, Otwock and Karczew

[@acurefordeath]

Love the video, I love sustainable infrastructure, and that includes other elements beyond transportation, so don't be afraid to post these topics!

[@vanhagar3000]

Have to disagree, district heating is in fact a sexy topic. I would love to see more infrastructure stuff, give me some utility tunnels, waste management, and water supply!

[@MircoWilhelm]

Actually some Cities in Europe switch the district heating systems in summer to cold water, and have been doing that for some years now

[@CUBETechie]

Vienna has at least 3 waste to energy cogeneration also they have a huge heat pump with 50Mw operating since 2020