# District Heating



## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)

District heating (also known as heat networks or teleheating) is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating and water heating. The heat is often obtained from a cogeneration plant burning fossil fuels but increasingly also biomass, although heat-only boiler stations, geothermal heating, heat pumps and central solar heating are also used, as well as nuclear power. District heating plants can provide higher efficiencies and better pollution control than localised boilers. According to some research, district heating with combined heat and power (CHPDH) is the cheapest method of cutting carbon emissions, and has one of the lowest carbon footprints of all fossil generation plants. CHPDH is being developed in Denmark as a store for renewable energy, particularly wind energy, that exceeds instantaneous grid demand via the use of heat pumps and thermal stores.

*Does your city have a district heating system?*


_*New York City Steam System*_

The New York City steam system is a district heating system which takes steam produced by steam generating stations and carries it under the streets of Manhattan to heat, cool, or supply power to high rise buildings and businesses. Some New York businesses and facilities also use the steam for cleaning and disinfection.

The New York Steam Company began providing service in lower Manhattan on March 3, 1882. Today, Consolidated Edison operates *the largest commercial steam system in the world*. The organization within Con Edison that is responsible for the system's operation is known as Steam Operations, providing steam service to over 1,700 customers and serving commercial and residential establishments in Manhattan _*from Battery Park to 96th Street uptown on the West side and 89th Street on the East side of Manhattan*_. Roughly 24 billion pounds (11,000,000 t) of steam flow through the system every year.









Steam vapor being vented through a typical Con Edison orange and white stack on *Seventh Avenue at West 20th Street*. Steam vapor such as this can be caused by a leak in Con Ed's steam system – which heats, cools and provides power for buildings in Manhattan up to East 89th and West 96th Street – or by cooler water contacting the outside of a steam pipe.









*East 74th Street plant*









*West 59th Street plant*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system


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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)

The grid of NYC has high infrastructural density.


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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)

The system is currently operated by Con Edison.


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## Banterers (Jul 18, 2016)

mrsmartman said:


> The system is currently operated by Con Edison.


You mean the district heating service? I can't figure out all too well what this company does, their website is pretty terrible.


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## Eric Offereins (Jan 1, 2004)

We have both district heating and re-usage of industrial energy for district heating









https://www.volkerwessels.com/nl/nieuws/detail/rotterdam-krijgt-nieuw-warmtenet-van-ca-e100-miljoen


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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)

*Con Edison Estimates It Has Responded to 200 Manhole Explosions Since Sunday*



NBC New York said:


> An early morning manhole fire caused officials to evacuate six buildings in Brooklyn Tuesday blocks from where a man was hit in the head by a flying manhole after a blast a day earlier, and Con Edison says it has responded to hundreds of similar blasts in the last three days alone.
> 
> No one was injured in Tuesday's fire, which started at about 4 a.m. Sixth Street in Park Slope, according to the FDNY...


Source: Con Edison Estimates It Has Responded to 200 Manhole Explosions Since Sunday - NBC New York http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/loca...e-Fire-Explosion-Brooklyn-FDNY-290629051.html 
Follow us: @nbcnewyork on Twitter | NBCNewYork on Facebook


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## RaunakMaan00 (Jul 5, 2017)

Nice Topic


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## alexandru.mircea (May 18, 2011)

Romanian cities have, due to communism, "district heating", but it's really bad. The efficiency of the network is very low because of the loss of warmth along the length of the pipes, and serious periodical renewal of the pipes is beyond the financial means of the cities. We know that in an ideal scenario this sort of heating is the best, but in reality we're probably never going to make it work anywhere near optimal parametres. Everyone who could afford it passed to individual appartment heating based on methane gas, since the late '90s.


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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)

> *Sensors Could Help Stop NYC Tenants From Freezing, Pols Say*
> 
> _A City Council bill would force landlords with a history of heat problems to track temperatures in their buildings._
> 
> ...


Source: New York City Patch

*Your Trusted Source of Photographs from New York and Pennsylvania*


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## PJH2015 (Jan 15, 2015)

Manchester, UK is in the process of implementing a district heating network to serve the civic core of the city (incl the Town Hall etc.).

The flue has been designed by Tonkin Liu, and is called the 'Tower of Light'. More of a sculpture than anything else - 





More info on the thread here if you want a further browse - http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=145791557#post145791557


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## Kpc21 (Oct 3, 2008)

Short history of district heating in Łódź.

The first power plant built to supply the city with electricity started operation in 1907. It was only a power plant, it didn't provide heat.

Before, there were only local electricity generators in some buildings, in factories and one power plant which supplied the tram network.

There were no horse-drawn trams in Łódź, the trams in Łódź were electric from the very beginning, from the moment of the start of the first city lines in 1898.










Before the World War 2, there was no district heating in Łódź.

In 1948, the project of building 4 new combined heat and power plants and extending the existing power plant for production of heat was created. As a result, in 1953, the power plant started delivering heat for the industry.

In 1955 started the construction of the first new, modern combined heat and power plant, so called EC-2:














































If you saw one time this photo of a hotel on some websites with funny photos (I know that it also appeared on some international ones):










then you should know that the power plant behind is the EC-2.

In 1959, the first heat pipeline supplying residential areas with heat, from EC-2 to the Żubardź district, started its operation.

In 1968, the first boiler in the third combined heat and power plant - the EC-3 - started its operation:




























1977 is the year in which the first boiler in the fourth and the newest combined heat and power plant began its operation:




























An interesting fact is that the top of one of the chimneys of the EC-4 is the highest point in Łódź and for this reason, the TV and radio transmitting antennas for the Łódź region are placed on it.

There was one more interesting object in Łódź district heating system, the heating plant in Ustronna street:










There is very few information about it and I don't know when it was built. But seemingly the main reason of building it was satisfying the needs for the heat of a newly built pediatric hospital (Centrum Zdrowia Matki Polki - Polish Mother's Health Center) in Rzgowska street. If I am not mistaken, it also provided heat to some residential areas. But the hospital was open in 1988, so the heating plant had to open also around that year.

In 2005, the state sold 85% of shares in the state company owning and operating the Łódź combined heat and power plants and its district heating system to the French company Dalkia. There was a lot of controversy around it because not only the plants but also the network got privatized. The city of Łódź wanted the network to be separated from the company and given to the city, as it happened in some other cities, but the government did not accept that and everything got sold.

The Ustronna heating plant belonged to the city. To 2001, it was used to deliver heat to the hospital mentioned before. The city had some plans related (anyway it would demand a full modernization of the plant) to it but they weren't realized as it wasn't even possible to connect it to first the state-owned, later the private district heating network. The grounds of this heating plant got sold in 2015 to a car dealer and its chimney got demolished yet in 2015:






In 2015, the Dalkia company was rebranded to Veolia after all the shares in the company got bought by Veolia (earlier, a part of shares in it belonged to a French state-owned energy company).

In 2001, the EC-1 plant (the one which was the first power plant in Łódź) ended its operation. It is being changed into a culture and entertainment center and it will be a part of the New Łódź Center:





































It includes or will include:
- Center of Science and Technology - an interactive museum of technology,
- a modern planetarium,
- National Center of Film Culture,
- Center of Comics and Interactive Narration,
- Łódź Film Commission - a unit helping and supporting film producers.

The EC-2 ended its operation in 2015. It was sold to an intermediary preparing the grounds and selling them to real estate developers in 2017. It is currently during demolition and you can see the current photos in this thread: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1795704&page=23

The tall chimneys will be demolished while cooling towers (those grey wide and low "chimneys") will be probably preserved because they are included in the register of historic monuments.



graff67 said:


>


Currently, there are two combined heat and power plants in operation in Łódź: EC-3 and EC-4. They provide electrical power to the national (and western-European) power grid as well as the heat to the district heating system in Łódź.

While the big residential areas of commie blocks are connected to the district heating system, many old tenement houses in the city center unfortunately aren't and they are heated with local masonry stoves, which leads to smog.

During renovations, those houses are being connected to the district heating and/or gas network.

From what I read, people say natural gas heating is actually cheaper than district heating. Which one is more ecological - I don't know. The district heating plants are fueled with coal but the exhaust fumes are very effectively filtered with modern filtering installations. Gas is theoretically more ecological than coal but when it's used locally, then the fumes are not filtered. So I don't know.


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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)

^^ Thanks for your informative introduction to district heating in Łódź.


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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)

With more than 100 miles of steam piping and nearly 2,000 buildings served, New York’s steam system is the largest in the world.

Produced by: Melanie Burford and Greg Moyer

Read the story here: http://nyti.ms/1ycaNts






*Your Trusted Source of Photographs from New York and Pennsylvania*


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## johnsonmark (Jul 31, 2020)

We realize that in a perfect situation such a warming is the best, yet in actuality we're most likely never going to make it work anyplace close to ideal parametres. Each and every individual who could bear the cost of it went to singular appartment warming dependent on methane gas.


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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)




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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)




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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)




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## mrsmartman (Mar 16, 2015)




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