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by cyberax 38 days ago
It doesn't work this way. Dense cities just don't have enough space for geothermal heating. It really works for single-family homes only, or maybe just a slightly more dense areas.

Not to mention that city infrastructure is WAY too expensive to build, anywhere. You'll spend more money on planning than on doing the actual construction.
2 comments
GJim 37 days ago
> geothermal heating

Ground source heat pumps != geothermal heating.

The technologies are completely different.

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quickthrowman 37 days ago
https://mncifa.mn.gov/heights-geothermal-district

Granted, this system is being installed on the grounds of a former 112 acre country club that is being redeveloped, so it’s more of a greenfield project than slapping a geothermal loop in a central business district, but it’s a geothermal district heating and cooling system in a city.

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cyberax 37 days ago
Their resulting density (~450 square meters per housing unit) is only a bit more than a dense SFH zone. And they also are able to tap into an aquifer, significantly improving their capacity.

In general, you absolutely can do district-level heating. The former USSR countries are known for doing this on the scale of entire cities. But I don't think it's feasible with geothermal (unless we're talking about Iceland).

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joe_mamba 37 days ago
>The former USSR countries are known for doing this on the scale of entire cities.

Not today anymore. In my warsaw-pact country, my parents and most of the city residents cut themselves off from district hating since the 2000 and installed natural gas heaters/boilers in their apartments, which is what most people in my city use to this day.

It's because the former commie district heating was incredibly wasteful and inefficient in the post commie era, making it cheaper and more convenient to have you own apartment heating.

Probably the same thing would happen with heat pumps in apartments now, if air-to-air heat pumps could produce enough heat in cold winters.

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cyberax 37 days ago
District heating worked really well with coal/gas power plants because the waste heat was essentially free. But the infrastructure for heat transmission was costly and required constant maintenance. I did calculations for district/distributed heating costs professionally in mid 2000s, and back then they were about even.

The engineering culture in the USSR was also quite poor, so it was easier to build one steam/heat plant rather than hundreds of individual water heaters.

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