Alan J Fletcher <[email protected]> wrote:
> Heat-to-cooling is also fairly efficient (I grew up with kerosine-fired > refrigerators). > Ah, but it would not matter if it was terribly inefficient, because the heat will cost nothing. As long as your refrigerator does not make the rest of the house uncomfortably hot, you will not care how much heat it takes to keep the thing going. You pay nothing either way. In fact, gas-fired thermal refrigerators produce little more waste heat than electric ones. > I don't know if it would be more efficient to distribute power/heat/cold > from a central neighborhood facility, or deliver power/heat and do the cold > in-home. > This is like asking whether it makes more sense to put individual water heaters in houses, or whether we should have a large water heater on each city block. The answer is, it is cheaper and more practical to have individual heaters because the cost of running pipes between a neighborhood water heater and the home would defeat any economics of pooling equipment. Also as I said, the heat costs nothing so there are no savings in fuel, which is the main advantage of large boilers. Hotels have large central boilers because this reduces fuel costs. If the fuel costs nothing then they would install individual on demand heaters under every sink and bathtub. This would probably be cheaper in the long run. Also, most people are not inclined to share equipment with their neighbors. We do not share lawnmowers even though lawnmowers usually sit idle 99% of the time. We do not share automobiles, also services such as Zip car are becoming popular. Some cities in Russia use "district heating" which is large-scale distribution of steam for space heating from a central steam generation plant. This is also done in New York City and at Cornell University. It makes sense where there is high population density was present day technology. It would make no sense at all with cold fusion. The cost of maintaining the infrastructure of pipes under New York City is considerable, and the pipes sometimes explode. - Jed
