Re:The biggest heat pumps in the world
by citrin_ru on Wednesday December 17, 2025 @12:29PM
(#46302618)
In USSR it was common to use waste heat from a thermal (gas/coal) power stations for district heating. Heat itself in such system is basically free - instead of sending hot water to cooling towers it first used to heat homes. But a pipeline network is not cheap in maintain (pipelines were usually not well maintained and leaks were common but with modern materials corrosion should be less of a problem).
The heat source of the network is gas or various oil fuels, so it makes sense that it's cheaper to do it yourself - gas infrastructure is very optimised, and there are very little network losses in comparison. I think it only makes sense if the network has a cheap energy source, for example by using waste energy from industrial processes or utility-scale geothermal.