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Comment by badpun | Hacker News Reader

European cities are doing it already.

Blew my mind living in a Berlin apartment, that the heating & hot water was managed centrally for the entire block (not the apartment block, the whole city block). Too used to Anglo cities where everyone does for themselves.

Blew my mind in stockholm that they have hot water at all. In my home country we just have electric heaters at the shower tap.

(seriously though, I knew they had hot water, it just never occurred to me how awesome it is to have hot water on the tap)

It makes a lot of sense when there is waste heat. But in places where there isn't, having per house or per apartment block heating unit is preferable because you cut on transmission losses and infrastructure cost

As I understand it, it's about economies of scale. It's cheaper to heat enough for the whole block in one big unit than it is to have a couple dozen smaller unit doing their own heating. I haven't really studied it. I'm sure the Germans have, efficiency is a whole cultural value with them ;)

It still makes sense. If heat is produced by a burning something, it is is more efficient to do that in one dedicated place. It makes it easier to pipe exhaust away from apartments and efficiency can be higher.

Also gas pipes to every home isn't a thing in many countries.

If you burn waste, you have waste heat.

There are about 17,000 heat networks in the UK: https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/business/consultancy-and-st...

Only about 2% of the total heating used though...

It is typically much cheaper to run your own heating. That is why in The Netherlands everyone is going for heat pumps instead of district heating. A heat pump can warm your home for €70 per month where district heating is €150 + €50 for equipment renting. Biggest problem with district heating is that there isn’t a free market. You are stuck with one party and they raise the prices every year.

My parents city in eastern Europe just recently switched from burning russian oil to biomass. Even then prices are constantly increasing while converting entire building to heat pump would drop prices by half. However it’s near impossible due to bureaucracy.

New York has central steam heating.

Yep, my European apartment has been heated with waste heat from a nearby data centre since 2013: https://eicher-pauli.ch/referenzen/ewz-waermeverbund-binz-zu...

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