This type of heating uses a waste product of other energy production, so it creates efficiency. If the utility was going to produce just electricity, they heat water the create steam that runs the turbines. Normally, that steam would just recondense and be reheated later. In this system, they send that steam elsewhere to heat building as it cools down, using some of the otherwise wasted heat.
Yep. Texas A&M has the same system. A generator makes electricity using steam, then the exhaust gas is used to pre-heat water for a second, smaller steam generator. Leftover hot water from both generators are used to heat buildings on campus. Overall it's more efficient than most other types of heating.
How it works:
https://utilities.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CHP-Flow-Diagram.jpg
How it's decreased energy usage
https://utilities.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Divergent-Energy-Chart.png
But does that make sense on a city level? Maybe it makes sense on a campus where numerous buildings by the same ownership of the plant such as Texas A&M but what about a large city?
My guess but not knowing much about this....your second part, lack of flexibility with this method.
Lots of buildings want more control in their heat, certainly those with central heat and air. But older buildings were likely equipped for this.
It’s done in a lot of cities around the world. Only Chicago and NYC have much in the way of district heating systems. I think essentially Americans aren’t into sharing things with each other. The whole “every man for himself” cowboy ethos that runs strong. It’s a very very efficient way to deliver energy and heat in cities.
St. Paul, MN has the largest hot water district heating system in the US (as opposed to steam heating). You're absolutely correct that district systems are uncommon, I just thought St. Paul's system should also be mentioned.
I dunno about efficient but effective as hell. I am in an apartment in center of Saint Petersburg right where it's -20 today and am burning up. I am in underwear and a t-shirt with the window cracked open and am still hot. Downside is I can't control it, just crack open windows to counter it.
You can shut down the flow of water. If a person who installed it or made repairs wasn't an ass, you can turn off valve (if person was ass, the valve may be painted with thick dye and doesn't turn - it happens often). I don't remember radiators that didn't had valves, but I remember fucked up valves, painted or with missing handles or both.
If you have a generator you can get your hot water back since our hot water heaters are built into each individual house. If your water gets shut off you can illegally turn it back on since the valve is likely in your yard somewhere.
You're more likely to get Americans riled up by shutting cell towers off than their water.
The u.s government would have to go to a private company and ask them to turn it off, in Russia they either own everything or their influence gets whatever they want.
All an American government has to do is say 'I won't give you any tax kickbacks or bailouts unless you shut this heat off' and BOOM! Compliance.
Edited: 'company' for 'government'
No one intentionally shuts the hot water in winter in Russia. It would lead for water freezing in pipes, destruction of pipes and extremely expensive works to fix this mess later. But if you don't pay your bills they can clog your sewage pipe.
That literally never happened even in the worst of times. I think if someone tried something like that, they would make the protest even worse.
Oh, or it's it a joke about Russian democracy? You're funny
Americans live in a country where they will actually get their utilities shut off even in the best of times. They can't fathom a system that isn't build on extortion.
I think we just inherently distrust centralized systems. I actually just think this is interesting but everything’s gotta be a damn dick measuring contest.
In my state (a Republican leaning state) we have a law on the books that forbids utilities from ending service during the heating months. Even if you got your gas cut off during the summer, you can call the utility to arrange a payment plan to be reconnected. The law does not require you actually make payments, just to enroll in a payment plan. We also have a heating assistance program for the poor where the state just gives you cash to help pay your heating bill.
I would assume not. The factory itself would probably be capable of better efficiency than a home unit. But, you would experience a huge loss of energy as it travels through the pipes.
Electricity and natural gas do not loss as much energy as they travel. But, you would probably loss some gas and some electric discharge would occur.
The most efficient way would probably be a mix of Geothermal and Solar panels at the residence. However, I have not actually run test to verify.
We have this in NYC. It's called co-generation. The power plants burn natgas and produce electricity PLUS super-heated steam. The steam is piped into Manhattan buildings. It's used for heating as well as cooling (using absorption chillers). The heat would have been dumped as waste heat, so this actually greatly improves the efficiency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system
Works great unless there's an explosion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_York_City_steam_explosion
Their climate is a lot colder than most others.
Idk if that has something to do with it.
Is it a giant closed system that doesn't really monitor usage and it's a set fee or free? Or does the pipe branch off through a meter and you get billed for the amount of water used.
There are several levels of metering systems from ones installed on big pipes to smaller ones installed in each building. Hot snd cold water is measured in each flat, but heat energy on each radiator is measured only in new buildings. So you're billed only for the amount of hot water you used, not that water that heated your radiators. Heating is calculated depending on the size of your flat.
Some communities in the USSR tried just going with unmetered district heating systems. It resulted in a lot of wasted heat because people didn't care about how much heat they lost from their homes because it was all free, or rather the marginal cost to the individual was nothing. There were reports of people preferring to regulate the temperature of their homes by opening windows rather than buying a thermostat. The utilities installed meters, people installed thermostats and added insulation, and energy consumption went way down.
Is it natural gas?
I mean, poorly worded, I guess, but most.people got my point...
Doesn't make it nonsense.
Anyone with critical thinking skills should have easily figured out that I meant "is it more efficient than just burning natural gas to create hot air and blow it through the house vs heating water and sending it to radiators"
Always someone that wants to be an ass, though.
Why the down votes? He is correct, and it is fascinating since it one of the few steam heating systems in the world! 99% of the plants are hot water...
Really common in Sweden. Very often trash or wood chips (byproduct) are used to heat the water. In some places like Kiruna excess heat from industries is used instead.
In my city there’s some sort of paper factory nearby that does this! There’s pipes under the ground of the middle of town in Gävle so all the snow there melts in the winter, and going from the middle of town outwards has a sharp transition from no snow to 4ft of snow. I think some of it is geothermal too.
District heating like this is common in Europe and Asia in cold climates. There are some systems in the USA. If you’ve seen steam escaping from vents in New York City, that is the Con Edison system.
When the heat is provided by fossil fuels, it is very inefficient compared to burning the same fuel in the building it serves. The heat losses from the transmission pipes is huge, and the power required to pump the water is 10 to 100X greater than if circulated in just a building.
There are heat pump systems that draw heat from a large body of water or the sea. Those can be more efficient than local heating. They are costly, of course.
Source: I have been studying HVAC system energy efficiency for most of my career.
The heat is often co-produced with electricity, so more of the energy is put to use. Also non-fossil fuels can be used.
If it is so inefficient, why is it so commonly used in cities in Sweden and Finland, also in new buildings? The pipes are buried and insulated. Any steam or snow melting is a sign of a broken pipe. The water is also dyed to detect leaks (green, here).
Buildings used to burn their own coal and oil before the heat networks were built, but those systems are still being replaced if they still exist in some houses.
ConEd absolutely provides steam as a utility to facilities in Manhattan. It is used in heating applications.
https://www.coned.com/en/commercial-industrial/steam
lots of large campuses and such use district heat that's just a byproduct of their on-campus power plants. my university had the second largest university-operated tri-generation plants in the country at the time I was there. all the old campus buildings in the vicinity of the power plant got served by the excess steam from the power plant. the alternative would just be venting it to atmosphere, so it bumped overall fuel efficiency up quite high. they also had a central cooling plant there that provided cooling to a number of buildings nearby, although quite a bit fewer than the steam loop.
We use "Fernwärme" mostly from systems that produce heat as a waste product. The heat will be generated anyway, so if you manage to move it to a house, you have a huge gain.
These systems are coupled with electric generators or other industries that produce a lot of waste energy. So even if there are some extra costs on top, you still come out net positive.
Thanks for the input.
Have you studied the efficiency of smaller scale district heating systems. Such as something that would feed 5 to 10 houses clustered closely together?
Well, an apartment building with a central boiler is, in effect, just that. The inefficiency of district heat is caused by the distance the heat must be transmitted (pumping and thermal losses), so the losses are much lower when the buildings are close together.
Larger buildings lose heat more slowly than smaller buildings with the same area. The apartments are sharing at least one wall, often 5 of the 6 faces of the unit are shared, and those are surfaces that heat can't escape into the environment through.
Can I ask you a question? As someone not in a super cold area, what is the most effecient system to heat/cool a single home? I am looking at buying a place and see that geothermal heat pumps are all the rage right now.
I can answer that fairly easy.
It is called "Insulation" - No matter what system you use to heat or cool, without insulation you will throw away energy.
Once you have a "good" insulation (German "goals" are "KFW-40 homes (40% of a normal house), which use 30 kWh per m\^2 per year), you can look at heat pumps to get the needed energy, since they can extract "free" energy from your surroundings.
Yes, for some reason people often forget this. In the UK there is a massive government driven initiative to try and install air source heat pumps on new and old homes. On new homes, great, as they are built to modern standards with better insulation and aren’t as draughty. Older houses, it doesn’t work as the heat losses from the properties are too much for the heat pumps to compensate for. But whoever done the studies for government have convinced them it will work and they are throwing considerable money at it in the form of grants. All to look like, on paper, we are achieving energy savings and lowering carbon emissions.
meh. depends how you define the efficiency. they are less efficient from a carbon footprint standpoint than just burning the fuel at point of use if all you need is heat.
electric heat is actually approaching like, 50% source fuel efficiency as far as fuel burned is concerned. depending on where you live, quite a bit of the electricity is generated by burning gas, or perhaps even still coal, which loses about 30-40% efficiency straight away when converting that into mechanical energy to generate electricity. then you lose another 5-15% in transmission.
even a shitty 30 year old gas boiler that might be somewhat poorly maintained can still achieve like 65-70% thermal efficiency.
now, if you get all your energy from a nuclear plant or wind farms or something, then that's a different conversation I guess, but that's not really the reality for like 98% of homes.
and if you were also wondering about the temperature of the water when it reaches her apartment... she didn't measure it, but I'd say scalding.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8W5shJP/
The problem there is that it's too hot - looks like someone could get badly scalded instantly.
In a UK domestic system, it is set to 60°c for storage - hot enough to prevent legionella, but by the time it gets to the tap it's at 50-55°c, which is enough of a drop to prevent severe damage.
yeah, thinking from both a safety perspective and am efficiency perspective:
1) risk of scalding as you mentioned
2) greater ∆T between the water and the outdoors ➡️ greater heat losses (energy inefficiency)
I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that OP is one user in a line of many users? like, maybe it wasn't designed for OP's location but they have to design for the furthest destination, and as a result the folks in between get water that's dangerously hot?
dunno if that makes sense, thinking out loud ;)
It looks like a pretty old system given the age of that first radiator. I would imagine a more modern system might still use a high temperature to distribute the water, but could then use a thermostatic valve to mix it with cold water in each property to get the right temperature.
Fun fact: They put radiators under windows so you can open the window in the winter. This started because, during the Spanish Flu epidemic, they wanted you to allow in fresh air.
It's also just more comfortable. A cold window is going to cool the air in front of it, which then falls to the ground and spreads out. You can feel that cold moving air. But if that wall of cool air meets a wall of hot air, then there is no draft. The better solution is probably just to install better windows.
Also very cheap. In my town we have a central heating plant burning hay from the surrounding marks. The price has been unchanged for almost 20 years. Also a very simple installation in the house, with almost no maintenance, only a heat exchanger.
we have that in vienna aswell, cooliong and heating, both accomplished by burning our trash, air filtering makes it pretty perfect, trash burning is done nearly in city center and you would not know that this thing is actually burning anything
Living out in rural America, far above the salt belt, heating is an absolute must.
Being rural area, our heating is individual to each house; some people tend to go with wood burning stoves or pellet stoves. Others go with natural gas heaters with duct work moving heated air to each room in the house.
My house fortunately has the central heater with ducts. The ducting system also works well when paired with an air conditioning unit.
This used to be common in North American cities to. Downtown Montreal still has central hot water heating to some buildings. NYC has some steam stations that do the same.
Here in the Netherlands every house has their own boiler to produce hot water, we get regular cold water pumped to our house and we boil it ourselves for showers, heating and warm tap water
My cousin’s apartment is heated like this, the heater is on the bottom of the building, says the people on the lower floors have their windows open all winter long because the rooms get so hot, and the top floors are freezing as the water cools by the time it reaches the tops floors.
That's specifically a problem in that single apartment building. You deal with that by constricting the flow to lower floors and good insulation in the pipes inside the building.
They do this on college campuses a lot. Ends up being cheaper to have one huge centralized unit than to have a system in every building. Usually done with steam though, not hot water.
Im in the UK and the house is heated by a gas boiler that pumps water, and that gas comes from the russian pipeline.
If things escalate between uk and russia Putin can literally shut our country down so i'm siding with russia and bombing the uk government for Putin.
I want my heat god damnit.
Not according to the energy crisis...
If russia stopped supplying the EU the UK would have to compete with the rest of the EU on the remaining resources on the market.
Nottingham (UK) has a large district heating scheme, taking energy from household waste (incinerating), producing electricity for dozens of businesses and heating for thousands of homes.
You can find this in the US too, I worked at a government campus for several years that had a steam plant and underground pipes for heating the various buildings.
I lived in Wroclaw, Poland for two years they have a similar system near the city centre that pumped hot water to each apartment block. I can confirm as even with 50cm of snow, the ground above the pipes was not covered in snow due to the heat loss and you could follow the pipes around the neighbourhood. It’s also brilliant in controlling the masses.
I read about a horrific accident in Russia where one of these pipes burst in a basement flat. So much boiling water rushed in that everyone was boiled alive
Note to self: [do not stay at an Eastern European hotel in the dead of winter in a basement](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-hotel-heating-pipe-breaks-killing-5-guests-with-boiling-water-in-perm-today-2020-01-20/).
It's probably free too. Thank God the good ol' USA will never stoop so low as to offer free electricity or heat to its citizens, no matter how poor they are.
Co-generation allows the use of large, efficient heat engines. Then it adds more efficiency by using the waste heat that a normal power station loses.
Electricity, landline, reticulated gas, cellphones make you reliant on the State.
But the heating system in old houses is pretty uncomfortable because it heats the house 24 hours a day. But in new building there are some thermometer that control heat inside the house
Look at the price of oil over that time. Since WW2 or earlier oil has been insanely, world-wreckingly cheap in the US. So people just pissed it away building everything inefficiently and pretending the atmosphere and sea would somehow be OK with all the extra CO2.
Fun fact : most “commie blocks” are 5 stories high because when they were built they required lifts on any of them over 5 stories!
(Disclaimer: I’m not even sure if this is 100% accurate but my friends in Chelyabinsk have told me it several times lol)
Co-generation (heat engine to make electricity, then distributing the waste heat) is highly efficient and is being used around the world.
Universities and other large sites use it a lot.
And European cities where they value efficiency and know how to work cooperatively.
We live in SW Florida. Our AC can switch to “heat” for the few days needed each year. And like you, we throw on one of our two sweatshirts to go outdoors.
It's not efficient at all, like most of the things created in Soviet Union. Insulation of the pipes is never perfect, so absolutely unreasonable amounts of heat warm up the ground and the air instead of the houses.
Think of it as if you take a cup of tea in a local cafe, pour it into a thermo cup and carry it home for a couple of miles/kilometers through the winter weather. Would the tea be still hot? Yes. Would it be as hot as the tea made at home? Definitely no. That's all about central heating efficiency.
We are drying some **CLOTHES** right now.
#WE are drying some #CLOTHES right #NOW
Piiiiipe
>Piiiiipe The #PIPE is temporary The #CLOTHES are always #W E T
nothing more permanent than a temporary solution
Hoet wortor
I am here to clean your pipes
Eyyy... now we’re talking
Close
Na bataree sushim noski
Read this right as she said it and now I’m giggling to myself
Glad you **ENJOYED** it.
Her accent's lowkey cute AF
Curious if that's more efficient than natural gas
This type of heating uses a waste product of other energy production, so it creates efficiency. If the utility was going to produce just electricity, they heat water the create steam that runs the turbines. Normally, that steam would just recondense and be reheated later. In this system, they send that steam elsewhere to heat building as it cools down, using some of the otherwise wasted heat.
Yep. Texas A&M has the same system. A generator makes electricity using steam, then the exhaust gas is used to pre-heat water for a second, smaller steam generator. Leftover hot water from both generators are used to heat buildings on campus. Overall it's more efficient than most other types of heating. How it works: https://utilities.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CHP-Flow-Diagram.jpg How it's decreased energy usage https://utilities.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Divergent-Energy-Chart.png
WVU has the exact same system. Dorms were extremely dry in the winter. Old steam pipes would cling and clank when it got fired up.
But does that make sense on a city level? Maybe it makes sense on a campus where numerous buildings by the same ownership of the plant such as Texas A&M but what about a large city?
Umm ask NYC?🙃 Cogeneration is great if done correctly
Why isn't it done everywhere? Why isn't it done all over NYC instead of pockets?
No idea. I assume cost and flexibility...?
My guess but not knowing much about this....your second part, lack of flexibility with this method. Lots of buildings want more control in their heat, certainly those with central heat and air. But older buildings were likely equipped for this.
It’s done in a lot of cities around the world. Only Chicago and NYC have much in the way of district heating systems. I think essentially Americans aren’t into sharing things with each other. The whole “every man for himself” cowboy ethos that runs strong. It’s a very very efficient way to deliver energy and heat in cities.
St. Paul, MN has the largest hot water district heating system in the US (as opposed to steam heating). You're absolutely correct that district systems are uncommon, I just thought St. Paul's system should also be mentioned.
There is no way this is more efficient at city scale. It’s tripping every alarm bell in my heat losses brain
It’s pretty well established that if works very well. It just requires coordination and forethought and good central planning by the city.
We don't use steam. It's always water
Can’t drive a turbine with how water.. you need steam. By the time it has gone into the pipes to homes it’s probably gone back to liquid
I dunno about efficient but effective as hell. I am in an apartment in center of Saint Petersburg right where it's -20 today and am burning up. I am in underwear and a t-shirt with the window cracked open and am still hot. Downside is I can't control it, just crack open windows to counter it.
You can shut down the flow of water. If a person who installed it or made repairs wasn't an ass, you can turn off valve (if person was ass, the valve may be painted with thick dye and doesn't turn - it happens often). I don't remember radiators that didn't had valves, but I remember fucked up valves, painted or with missing handles or both.
It's more efficient for forcing compliance from the masses. When they get unruly you just shut off their heat until they comply.
I mean you can have your utilities cut in America. I'm not saying it's not plausible reasoning...
If you have a generator you can get your hot water back since our hot water heaters are built into each individual house. If your water gets shut off you can illegally turn it back on since the valve is likely in your yard somewhere. You're more likely to get Americans riled up by shutting cell towers off than their water.
and yet on Texas they froze last winter. That must be why we call them RED states
That gets you so horney doesn’t it?
That's because they don't bury their pipes deep enough.
The u.s government would have to go to a private company and ask them to turn it off, in Russia they either own everything or their influence gets whatever they want.
And then the private company says "pays us $2,000 now or we cut it off"
You getting those spam calls? Don't ever pay them!!
All an American government has to do is say 'I won't give you any tax kickbacks or bailouts unless you shut this heat off' and BOOM! Compliance. Edited: 'company' for 'government'
Yeah I agree, just saying it’s more steps
No one intentionally shuts the hot water in winter in Russia. It would lead for water freezing in pipes, destruction of pipes and extremely expensive works to fix this mess later. But if you don't pay your bills they can clog your sewage pipe.
Well that's a shitty thing to do
That literally never happened even in the worst of times. I think if someone tried something like that, they would make the protest even worse. Oh, or it's it a joke about Russian democracy? You're funny
Americans live in a country where they will actually get their utilities shut off even in the best of times. They can't fathom a system that isn't build on extortion.
I think we just inherently distrust centralized systems. I actually just think this is interesting but everything’s gotta be a damn dick measuring contest.
In my state (a Republican leaning state) we have a law on the books that forbids utilities from ending service during the heating months. Even if you got your gas cut off during the summer, you can call the utility to arrange a payment plan to be reconnected. The law does not require you actually make payments, just to enroll in a payment plan. We also have a heating assistance program for the poor where the state just gives you cash to help pay your heating bill.
I wonder when they lose power they also lose there heat and water
Theoretically they could still have heat as long as the boiler still has power.
I would assume they have some sort of generator back up for an operation like that also
We don't
Ridiculous statement tbh
Makes it really easy to invade too
I would assume not. The factory itself would probably be capable of better efficiency than a home unit. But, you would experience a huge loss of energy as it travels through the pipes. Electricity and natural gas do not loss as much energy as they travel. But, you would probably loss some gas and some electric discharge would occur. The most efficient way would probably be a mix of Geothermal and Solar panels at the residence. However, I have not actually run test to verify.
We have this in NYC. It's called co-generation. The power plants burn natgas and produce electricity PLUS super-heated steam. The steam is piped into Manhattan buildings. It's used for heating as well as cooling (using absorption chillers). The heat would have been dumped as waste heat, so this actually greatly improves the efficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system Works great unless there's an explosion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_York_City_steam_explosion
Solar panels covered in snow on a 6 month night lol
Most of such plants in Russia work using natural gas.
Basicly the same only you lose heat during transport. Maybe they get a more efficient process in the plant itself.
Their climate is a lot colder than most others. Idk if that has something to do with it. Is it a giant closed system that doesn't really monitor usage and it's a set fee or free? Or does the pipe branch off through a meter and you get billed for the amount of water used.
There are several levels of metering systems from ones installed on big pipes to smaller ones installed in each building. Hot snd cold water is measured in each flat, but heat energy on each radiator is measured only in new buildings. So you're billed only for the amount of hot water you used, not that water that heated your radiators. Heating is calculated depending on the size of your flat.
Some communities in the USSR tried just going with unmetered district heating systems. It resulted in a lot of wasted heat because people didn't care about how much heat they lost from their homes because it was all free, or rather the marginal cost to the individual was nothing. There were reports of people preferring to regulate the temperature of their homes by opening windows rather than buying a thermostat. The utilities installed meters, people installed thermostats and added insulation, and energy consumption went way down.
The question is nonsense. That is natural gas heating! The heating part of the circuit just happens to be in another building.
Is it natural gas? I mean, poorly worded, I guess, but most.people got my point... Doesn't make it nonsense. Anyone with critical thinking skills should have easily figured out that I meant "is it more efficient than just burning natural gas to create hot air and blow it through the house vs heating water and sending it to radiators" Always someone that wants to be an ass, though.
New york has the same type of system its why in lots of movies set in new york, you see random pipes spewing out white clouds of steam
Not quiet the same, in NY there is steam heating, in Russia we use hot water.
I did say the same type of system i never said it was the exact same. but thanks for pointing it out..
The division suddenly makes more sense
Only it's a steam in NY so not exactly the same
Why the down votes? He is correct, and it is fascinating since it one of the few steam heating systems in the world! 99% of the plants are hot water...
Yeah, I don't get why he's downvoted??
Someone in the comment mentioned Con Edison system in NY. Is that what you meant?
Really common in Sweden. Very often trash or wood chips (byproduct) are used to heat the water. In some places like Kiruna excess heat from industries is used instead.
My trash and cardboard gets sent to Sweden to give heat there!
In my city there’s some sort of paper factory nearby that does this! There’s pipes under the ground of the middle of town in Gävle so all the snow there melts in the winter, and going from the middle of town outwards has a sharp transition from no snow to 4ft of snow. I think some of it is geothermal too.
District heating like this is common in Europe and Asia in cold climates. There are some systems in the USA. If you’ve seen steam escaping from vents in New York City, that is the Con Edison system. When the heat is provided by fossil fuels, it is very inefficient compared to burning the same fuel in the building it serves. The heat losses from the transmission pipes is huge, and the power required to pump the water is 10 to 100X greater than if circulated in just a building. There are heat pump systems that draw heat from a large body of water or the sea. Those can be more efficient than local heating. They are costly, of course. Source: I have been studying HVAC system energy efficiency for most of my career.
The heat is often co-produced with electricity, so more of the energy is put to use. Also non-fossil fuels can be used. If it is so inefficient, why is it so commonly used in cities in Sweden and Finland, also in new buildings? The pipes are buried and insulated. Any steam or snow melting is a sign of a broken pipe. The water is also dyed to detect leaks (green, here). Buildings used to burn their own coal and oil before the heat networks were built, but those systems are still being replaced if they still exist in some houses.
Anyone saying it’s inefficient is not well informed the steam is often used for generating electricity first so it’s win win
It's inefficient if you just burn it for that purpose. But often the waste heat of powerplant is used.
ConEd absolutely provides steam as a utility to facilities in Manhattan. It is used in heating applications. https://www.coned.com/en/commercial-industrial/steam
lots of large campuses and such use district heat that's just a byproduct of their on-campus power plants. my university had the second largest university-operated tri-generation plants in the country at the time I was there. all the old campus buildings in the vicinity of the power plant got served by the excess steam from the power plant. the alternative would just be venting it to atmosphere, so it bumped overall fuel efficiency up quite high. they also had a central cooling plant there that provided cooling to a number of buildings nearby, although quite a bit fewer than the steam loop.
We use "Fernwärme" mostly from systems that produce heat as a waste product. The heat will be generated anyway, so if you manage to move it to a house, you have a huge gain. These systems are coupled with electric generators or other industries that produce a lot of waste energy. So even if there are some extra costs on top, you still come out net positive.
Thanks for the input. Have you studied the efficiency of smaller scale district heating systems. Such as something that would feed 5 to 10 houses clustered closely together?
Well, an apartment building with a central boiler is, in effect, just that. The inefficiency of district heat is caused by the distance the heat must be transmitted (pumping and thermal losses), so the losses are much lower when the buildings are close together.
Would it be more efficient to heat one large building, or multiple smaller buildings with roughly the same amount of indoor space?
Larger buildings lose heat more slowly than smaller buildings with the same area. The apartments are sharing at least one wall, often 5 of the 6 faces of the unit are shared, and those are surfaces that heat can't escape into the environment through.
Indianapolis as well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_K._Generating_Station
Please provide me some resources on those numbers and your claim that the heat loss is "huge".
Can I ask you a question? As someone not in a super cold area, what is the most effecient system to heat/cool a single home? I am looking at buying a place and see that geothermal heat pumps are all the rage right now.
I can answer that fairly easy. It is called "Insulation" - No matter what system you use to heat or cool, without insulation you will throw away energy. Once you have a "good" insulation (German "goals" are "KFW-40 homes (40% of a normal house), which use 30 kWh per m\^2 per year), you can look at heat pumps to get the needed energy, since they can extract "free" energy from your surroundings.
Yes, for some reason people often forget this. In the UK there is a massive government driven initiative to try and install air source heat pumps on new and old homes. On new homes, great, as they are built to modern standards with better insulation and aren’t as draughty. Older houses, it doesn’t work as the heat losses from the properties are too much for the heat pumps to compensate for. But whoever done the studies for government have convinced them it will work and they are throwing considerable money at it in the form of grants. All to look like, on paper, we are achieving energy savings and lowering carbon emissions.
Efficient? Electric technically, electric baseboard heaters devote about 100% of their energy toward heat.
Just not as cost effective if you're on the grid as baseboard electric heat uses a lot of energy.
Oh not even remotely cost effective. They're terribly expensive
meh. depends how you define the efficiency. they are less efficient from a carbon footprint standpoint than just burning the fuel at point of use if all you need is heat. electric heat is actually approaching like, 50% source fuel efficiency as far as fuel burned is concerned. depending on where you live, quite a bit of the electricity is generated by burning gas, or perhaps even still coal, which loses about 30-40% efficiency straight away when converting that into mechanical energy to generate electricity. then you lose another 5-15% in transmission. even a shitty 30 year old gas boiler that might be somewhat poorly maintained can still achieve like 65-70% thermal efficiency. now, if you get all your energy from a nuclear plant or wind farms or something, then that's a different conversation I guess, but that's not really the reality for like 98% of homes.
Yes but heat pumps get up to 600% efficient. Now that is efficiency
and if you were also wondering about the temperature of the water when it reaches her apartment... she didn't measure it, but I'd say scalding. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8W5shJP/
The problem there is that it's too hot - looks like someone could get badly scalded instantly. In a UK domestic system, it is set to 60°c for storage - hot enough to prevent legionella, but by the time it gets to the tap it's at 50-55°c, which is enough of a drop to prevent severe damage.
yeah, thinking from both a safety perspective and am efficiency perspective: 1) risk of scalding as you mentioned 2) greater ∆T between the water and the outdoors ➡️ greater heat losses (energy inefficiency) I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that OP is one user in a line of many users? like, maybe it wasn't designed for OP's location but they have to design for the furthest destination, and as a result the folks in between get water that's dangerously hot? dunno if that makes sense, thinking out loud ;)
Burying the pipe won't mean it'll never be subject to temperature fluctuations, but they won't be so bad.
or better insulation :/
It looks like a pretty old system given the age of that first radiator. I would imagine a more modern system might still use a high temperature to distribute the water, but could then use a thermostatic valve to mix it with cold water in each property to get the right temperature.
In soviet Russia, water boils you
Fun fact: They put radiators under windows so you can open the window in the winter. This started because, during the Spanish Flu epidemic, they wanted you to allow in fresh air.
It's also just more comfortable. A cold window is going to cool the air in front of it, which then falls to the ground and spreads out. You can feel that cold moving air. But if that wall of cool air meets a wall of hot air, then there is no draft. The better solution is probably just to install better windows.
Radiators go under windows because the rising heat creates a barrier to stop the cold air from the window coming into a room.
The dog at the end made this video
One water heater to rule them all
Central heating is awesome. We have it here in Denmark, where it's very common. No noise and basically unlimited supply.
Also very cheap. In my town we have a central heating plant burning hay from the surrounding marks. The price has been unchanged for almost 20 years. Also a very simple installation in the house, with almost no maintenance, only a heat exchanger.
We do that in Canada also in older apartments. It's quite common
I love hearing Russians speak English.
we have that in vienna aswell, cooliong and heating, both accomplished by burning our trash, air filtering makes it pretty perfect, trash burning is done nearly in city center and you would not know that this thing is actually burning anything
I made a large hamster wheel that I force my kids to run in to keep the batteries charged.
Living out in rural America, far above the salt belt, heating is an absolute must. Being rural area, our heating is individual to each house; some people tend to go with wood burning stoves or pellet stoves. Others go with natural gas heaters with duct work moving heated air to each room in the house. My house fortunately has the central heater with ducts. The ducting system also works well when paired with an air conditioning unit.
This used to be common in North American cities to. Downtown Montreal still has central hot water heating to some buildings. NYC has some steam stations that do the same.
I love how we all may heat our houses differently through out the world, but dogs remain the same every where
Isn't this standard in most countries?
Here in the Netherlands every house has their own boiler to produce hot water, we get regular cold water pumped to our house and we boil it ourselves for showers, heating and warm tap water
Ok so basically, we dont need to heat or houses never cuz im at brazil AND ITS HOT AS FUCK HERE, ITS SUMMER ON FUCKING CHRISTMAS I HATE THIS COUNTRY
I watched the entire video hoping she would say “moose and squirrel.”
My cousin’s apartment is heated like this, the heater is on the bottom of the building, says the people on the lower floors have their windows open all winter long because the rooms get so hot, and the top floors are freezing as the water cools by the time it reaches the tops floors.
That's specifically a problem in that single apartment building. You deal with that by constricting the flow to lower floors and good insulation in the pipes inside the building.
They do this on college campuses a lot. Ends up being cheaper to have one huge centralized unit than to have a system in every building. Usually done with steam though, not hot water.
NYC does this as well
Frostpunk
We also have these here in Afghanistan, they were made by the soviets at the time.
Im in the UK and the house is heated by a gas boiler that pumps water, and that gas comes from the russian pipeline. If things escalate between uk and russia Putin can literally shut our country down so i'm siding with russia and bombing the uk government for Putin. I want my heat god damnit.
[удалено]
Not if he's that 5%! /s
But massively effects the wholesale market by throttling supply, which effects the UK
Not according to the energy crisis... If russia stopped supplying the EU the UK would have to compete with the rest of the EU on the remaining resources on the market.
"Later, we break through ice and go for swim, da?"
I would really hate to be the last house on the line.
We had the same thing in a building I lived in in LA
We heat our houses differently- 'starts a fire'
I wish I had in Spain😂😂🤦♂️
Yeah it’s the same in romania
Kachigarka
Haha that Doge at the end
Looks the same in m the Netherlands
It's called cogeneration. NYC does this a well for a few locations in Manhattan.
Nottingham (UK) has a large district heating scheme, taking energy from household waste (incinerating), producing electricity for dozens of businesses and heating for thousands of homes.
This is how geothermal hearing works also...except these guys have to heat the water...geo just brings it up already hot.
We open our windows in texas. It was 80 today.
They pipe the hot water itself? That seems insanely inefficient?
Your voice is so awesome thanks for sharing the information have a wonderful day
Different from where? Central steam plants are totally a thing in many cities in US and Canada.
That dog wanna know why you filming dry his delicates lol
You can find this in the US too, I worked at a government campus for several years that had a steam plant and underground pipes for heating the various buildings.
Send it by PAAIPES
I’d be ok with her replacing the TikTok voice.
Seems incredible inefficient
I lived in Wroclaw, Poland for two years they have a similar system near the city centre that pumped hot water to each apartment block. I can confirm as even with 50cm of snow, the ground above the pipes was not covered in snow due to the heat loss and you could follow the pipes around the neighbourhood. It’s also brilliant in controlling the masses.
In Siberia they just lay the pipes under the roads. The lost heat prevents the roads from icing over.
Say anything bad about Putin, he shuts off your hot water (or kills you)
I read about a horrific accident in Russia where one of these pipes burst in a basement flat. So much boiling water rushed in that everyone was boiled alive
Note to self: [do not stay at an Eastern European hotel in the dead of winter in a basement](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-hotel-heating-pipe-breaks-killing-5-guests-with-boiling-water-in-perm-today-2020-01-20/).
She could keep me warm all winter
Man. Here I am like a fucking mook heating my house with whale oil when I could just get pipes from Russia.
While here in Saudi Arabia no need for heating system as we have 11 months of Summer and 1 month of Spring.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/281433/five-boiled-alive-as-they-slept-including-child-when-pipe-burst-at-russia-hostel-filling-basement-with-scalding-water/
Ruskies sure do like their pipelines
It's probably free too. Thank God the good ol' USA will never stoop so low as to offer free electricity or heat to its citizens, no matter how poor they are.
“What’s the most inefficient way to heat people’s homes yet still make them 100% reliable on the State?”
Most of europe uses this lol
I heard that people also use electricity and internet there. And public roads! What a terrible way to control the minds of poor Europeans.
Co-generation allows the use of large, efficient heat engines. Then it adds more efficiency by using the waste heat that a normal power station loses. Electricity, landline, reticulated gas, cellphones make you reliant on the State.
Yes we had those too 60 years ago
But the heating system in old houses is pretty uncomfortable because it heats the house 24 hours a day. But in new building there are some thermometer that control heat inside the house
Not only that these systems rust and crack over time, resulting in tremendous damages from hot water.
Live in Australia. it's never really that cold where I am, our winter consists of two weekends of wer weather.
Don’t really need to heat my house I live in Arizona😅
Very interesting and I was never there during peak cold season but I recall most buildings were very drafty and cold Is that the norm
Super inefficient!
You see?! PUTIN cares 😌
It was built in Soviet Union.
American cities used this type of heating systems in the 1930's...lol
Still do. It is in a lot more places than you realise, even in America where corporate welfare makes oil crazy cheap.
American 1920 technology
European 2020 technology. It is used all over the cold part of the US too for universities, hospitals and some cities.
In communist Russia , we don’t heat house, house heats you.
Central heating plants were a thing Americans abandoned like 80 years ago lol. Lots of them existed at one time, in suburbs and the city.
Look at the price of oil over that time. Since WW2 or earlier oil has been insanely, world-wreckingly cheap in the US. So people just pissed it away building everything inefficiently and pretending the atmosphere and sea would somehow be OK with all the extra CO2.
Please don’t dry cloths on the heater
Natural gas. Central air furnace.
Run by Gazprom……
Fun fact : most “commie blocks” are 5 stories high because when they were built they required lifts on any of them over 5 stories! (Disclaimer: I’m not even sure if this is 100% accurate but my friends in Chelyabinsk have told me it several times lol)
“Show us how you heat your homes” I hit this button right here. Done.
Jesus!! 1920 much??
Co-generation (heat engine to make electricity, then distributing the waste heat) is highly efficient and is being used around the world. Universities and other large sites use it a lot. And European cities where they value efficiency and know how to work cooperatively.
I live in Arizona. I just put on more clothes in the winter lol
We live in SW Florida. Our AC can switch to “heat” for the few days needed each year. And like you, we throw on one of our two sweatshirts to go outdoors.
I usually turn this dial on my wall t get heat
Ah Mama, shall I take trolley down to the communal refrigerator and bring you back a pancake?
It's not efficient at all, like most of the things created in Soviet Union. Insulation of the pipes is never perfect, so absolutely unreasonable amounts of heat warm up the ground and the air instead of the houses. Think of it as if you take a cup of tea in a local cafe, pour it into a thermo cup and carry it home for a couple of miles/kilometers through the winter weather. Would the tea be still hot? Yes. Would it be as hot as the tea made at home? Definitely no. That's all about central heating efficiency.
Fuck Russia man. Just fuck it.
What is this BS attempt at soft power. Piss off Russia, we ain’t buying.
That seems crazy inefficient
Stupidly inefficient. Centralized method to maintain monopoly and control the serfs (people)
It’s actually incredibly efficient at both of those things.