District heating and chilled water is uneconomical for single-family homes. It does work well in medium to high density areas.

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gambiting 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't know how economical that is, but just as an anecdote - the town I'm from in Poland has district heating to all single family homes, town of about 20k people. And coincidentally, I now live in the UK and a new estate near me has district heating to all the houses they are building, not apartment blocks. So it must make some sense to someone, or they wouldn't be outfitting 100+ houses this way.

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mschuster91 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At least in parts of Eastern Europe (especially the former GDR) district heating systems were introduced as a response to the oil crises of the 70s, resulting price shocks and the transport of coal to households being very labor and resource incentive [1].

[1] https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/schauplaetze/Windkraft-und-Erd...

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hunterpayne 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"I don't know how economical that is"

Sure you do. Think about it. Its just drilling a hole and making electricity from the heat. We have been able to do this for a very long time. So if people aren't really doing it much, its not economical. If it was now becoming economical, the article would describe some new way of doing it that makes it economical. The article doesn't, so you "know" it isn't.

PS This has been tried many time, it only works in very specific situations, usually places where building a full PP doesn't make sense or where you are making a lot of electricity for some other purpose (mining usually).

	▲	LeFantome 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The “new” way is plasma drilling.