What is district heating? How does it work?
District heating (sometimes called community heating) is where one central boiler provides heat to several buildings. These might be blocks of social housing, local council offices, a school, etc… District heating can be provided using the co-generated heat from electrical power generation in a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) installation. This can increase the overall efficiency of power generation by a factor of three or more. Hot water or steam is transferred around the site in a highly insulated heating main. Each building then has an individual heat exchanger to draw off the heat into the building as required. District heating is much more common in some European countries than in the UK. In Denmark for instance district heating provides around 60% of heating. See case studies.
