District heating has been used for many years but is only now starting to gain popularity in this country. Mike Heads looks at what district heating consists of, how it works and how it is designed and managed.
In district heating (DH) systems, heat is generated from a central source and then distributed via a network of insulated pipes to provide both space heating and domestic hot water to a number of individual dwellings or locations.
Schemes vary in size from a small apartment block to city-wide networks, and DH is also known as community heating. A major advantage of district heating systems is that heat can be supplied to the system from a range of sources including boilers using conventional fuels, biomass, CHP, solar, thermal, heat pumps and waste heat from industrial processes.
District heating has not been popular in the UK compared to other European countries due to economic constraints. Installing the network of insulated hot water pipes can be expensive, and until now, fossil fuels have been relatively cheap. There are also social issues – in Europe, a large proportion of the population tend to live in flats whereas the UK is a nation of house dwellers.
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