Meet the biggest heat pumps in the world

 

MVV Energie is building the world's most powerful heat pump systems

From the BBC

The pipe that will supply the heat pump, drawing water from the River Rhine in Germany, is so big that you could walk through it, fully upright, I'm told.

"We plan to take 10,000 litres per second," says Felix Hack, project manager at MVV Environment, an energy company, as he describes the 2m diameter pipes that will suck up river water in Mannheim, and then return it once heat from the water has been harvested.

In October, parent firm MVV Energie announced its plan to build what could be the most powerful heat pump modules ever. Two units, each with a capacity of 82.5 megawatts.

That's enough to supply around 40,000 homes, in total, via a district heating system. MVV Energie aims to build the system on the site of a coal power plant that is converting to cleaner technologies.

The scale of the heat pumps was determined partly by limits on the size of machinery that could be transported through the streets of Mannheim, or potentially via barges along the Rhine. "We're not sure about that yet," says Mr Hack. "It might come via the river."

One person well aware of the project is Alexandre de Rougemont, at Everllence (formerly MAN Energy Solutions), another German company that also makes extremely large heat pumps. "It is a competition, yeah," he says. "We're open about it."

Heat pumps soak up heat from the air, ground or, in these cases, bodies of water. Refrigerants inside the heat pumps evaporate when they are warmed even slightly.

By compressing the refrigerant, you boost that heat further. This same process occurs in heat pumps designed to supply single homes, it just happens on a much larger scale in giant heat pumps that serve entire city districts.

As towns and cities around the world seek to decarbonise, many are deciding to purchase large heat pumps, which can attach to district heating networks.

These networks allow hot water or steam to reach multiple buildings, all connected up with many kilometres of pipe. Ever bigger models of heat pump are emerging to meet demand.

"There was a lot of pressure on us to change the heat generation to new sources, especially renewable sources," explains Mr Hack as he discusses the decommissioning of coal-fired units at the Mannheim plant. The site is right by the Rhine, already has a hefty electricity grid connection, and is plugged in to the district heating network, so it makes sense to install the heat pumps here, he says.

He notes that the technology is possible partly thanks to the availability of very large compressors in the oil and gas industry – where they are used to compress fossil fuels for storage or transportation, for example.

Work on the Mannheim project is due to start next year. The heat pumps – with a combined capacity of 162MW – are set to become fully operational in the winter of 2028-29. Mr Hack adds that a multi-step filter system will prevent the heat pumps sucking up fish from the river, and that modelling suggests the system will affect the average temperature of the river by less than 0.1C.

Installations such as this are not cheap. The Mannheim heat pump setup will cost €200m ($235m; £176m). Mr de Rougemont at Everllence says that, at his company, heat-pump equipment costs roughly €500,000 per megawatt of installed capacity – this does not include the additional cost of buildings, associated infrastructure and so on.

Everllence is currently working on a project in Aalborg, Denmark that will be even more powerful than the system in Mannheim, with a total capacity of 176MW. It will use smaller modules, however – four 44MW units – and is due to become operational in 2027, when it will supply nearly one third of all heating demand in the town.

Those 44MW machines are actually the same ones used in a previous project, now fully operational, to the south of Aalborg in Esbjerg. There, they don't run at maximum capacity but rather supply 35MW each.

Large hot water storage tanks, each able to hold 200,000 cubic metres of liquid, will give the system added flexibility, adds Mr de Rougemont: "When the electricity price is high, you stop your heat pump and only provide heat from the storage."

Veronika Wilk at the Austrian Institute of Technology says, "Heat pumps and district heating systems are a great fit." Such systems can harvest heat from bodies of water or even wastewater from sewage treatment plants.

Dr Wilk notes that, when you use multiple large heat pumps on a district heating network, you gain flexibility and efficiency. You could run two out of four heat pumps in the autumn, say, when less heat is required than during the depths of winter.

All the systems mentioned so far harvest energy from water sources but, less commonly, very large heat pumps can use the air as a heat source, too. Even in a relatively cold city such as Helsinki.

"The sea in front of Helsinki is too shallow," explains Timo Aaltonen, senior vice president of heating and cooling at Helen Oy, an energy firm. "We calculated that we would need to build a tunnel more than 20km long to the ocean, to get enough water [with a] temperature high enough."

Helsinki is in the process of radically overhauling its district heating system. The city has added heat pumps, biomass burners and electric boilers to a 1,400km network that links up nearly 90% of buildings in the Finnish capital, adds Mr Aaltonen.

Heat pumps convert single kilowatt hours of electricity into multiple kilowatt hours of heat but electric boilers can't do this and are therefore considered less efficient.

I ask why Helen Oy decided to install hundreds of megawatts of these boilers and Mr Aaltonen says that they are cheaper to install than heat pumps and having them also means he and colleagues don't have to rely entirely on the air, which is limited in terms of how much heat it can provide at scale. Plus, the electric boilers can help to soak up surplus renewables and provide an electricity grid-balancing function, he says.

The sand battery

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

The idea of storing heat in sand to warm homes through winter may, on the face of it, seem too simple to work.

Drop a load of cheap builder's sand in an insulated silo, heat the sand with renewable electricity, and then tap the stored thermal energy for months on end.

In an age of green hydrogen, lithium-ion batteries and other high-tech energy solutions, it can't work, right?

Finland begs to differ. This month saw the Nordic nation launch the world's first commercial "sand battery".

 

Heat-storing sand batteries like this one in Finland could become a familiar sight at Australian factories looking to cut their gas bills.(Supplied: Polar Night Energy)

 

About 230 kilometres north-west of Helsinki, in the town of Kankaanpää, homes, offices and the public swimming pool are being heated by thermal energy stored in a 7-metre steel container filled with 100 tonnes of sand.

So how does it work, what else can it be used for, and should we build them in Australia?

The Kankaanpää sand battery is connected directly to the grid and runs when electricity is cheapest.

Hot air blown through pipes heats the sand in the steel container by resistive heating (this is how electric heaters work).

The sand is able to store heat at around 500–600 degrees Celsius for months, so solar power generated in the summer can be used to heat homes in the winter.

It can store up to 8 megawatt-hours of energy, which is the capacity of a large, grid-scale lithium battery.

The project was the work of Finnish startup Polar Night Energy and a local Finnish utility Vatajankoski.

Polar Night Energy's chief executive officer Markku Ylönen said the entire battery could be built in "any steel workshop".

"It's really a typical silo with nothing that special," he said.

To discharge the stored thermal energy, air is circulated through pipes in the sand where it's heated, then directed, to wherever it's needed.

Right now, that's mostly heating homes, but it could also be used for high-temperature industrial processes, Mr Ylönen said.

Very little energy is lost in this process, so long as the heat is not being transported very far, he said.

In theory, the stored heat could be used to drive a steam turbine to generate electricity, but this is far less efficient.

"The efficiency will be something like 20–25 per cent," Mr Ylönen said.

"Technologically speaking, there are no obstacles, but the economic case is harder to find than with heat-only projects."

Australia doesn't have the same domestic heating requirements as Finland, but there's plenty of potential for using stored thermal for industrial processes, said Andrew Blakers, director of the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems.

"There's an enormous storage market for these things and that is to replace gas in factories," Professor Blakers said.

About 16 per cent of Australia's emissions are due to burning of gas in industry for processes needing high temperatures (anything above 100C).

Heat pumps (the same technology used by reverse cycle air-conditioners), which can be powered by renewables, max out at about 100C, meaning they can't replace gas for these industrial uses.

But thermal storage can deliver temperatures of more than 1,000C, depending on the storage medium.

"You choose the storage medium to suit the temperature of the process," Professor Blakers said.

Sand is just one option. Others include crushed rock and molten salt.

The idea of thermal energy storage, including the sand battery concept, has been around for years.

So why are we only building these heat batteries now?

Firstly, for many years it's been cheaper to burn gas to generate high temperatures.

Secondly, due to heat loss, thermal energy can't be transported as easily as pressurised gas, which can make it trickier to use.

But recently the economics have changed.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the supply of gas to Europe and other markets.

In the first quarter of 2022, European gas spot prices were five times higher than in the first quarter of 2021.

These high prices led to Australian gas producers exporting their gas, rather than selling it domestically, driving up prices in Australia.

Thermal storage has become cheaper than burning gas for high-temperature industrial processes, Professor Blakers said.

"In the past three years, the price of solar and wind has fallen so far, and [in the past few months], the price of gas has gone through the roof.

But factories looking to switch to thermal storage won't be able to simply pipe in heat, like they do with gas.

Instead, they'll have to build their own thermal storage silos and heat them with cheap daytime solar electricity, from their own rooftop systems or the grid.

"A few thousand cubic metres of storage would be enough to keep a factory running," Professor Blakers said.

Or factories could wait for gas prices to fall.

"I think they'd be nuts if they waited," Professor Blakers said.

"Nobody can predict where the gas price will go, but the one thing you know is daytime solar electricity is going to stay at a low price."

The Australian start-up 1414 Degrees has developed and patented a thermal storage system similar to the Finnish battery, but using molten silicon to store heat instead of sand.

It recently teamed up with another company, Vast Solar, to plan a solar thermal project in South Australia.

The proposed Vast Solar solar thermal project in South Australia.(Supplied: Vast Solar)

 

Swedish public utility Vattenfall is also building a 200MW-rated thermal energy storage in Berlin.

The heat storage tank can hold 56 million litres of water, which will be heated to 98C to warm homes.

Polar Night Energy has had plenty of interest in building more sand batteries, with the war in Ukraine putting the focus on alternative energy sources and storage methods, Markku Ylönen said.

Recently Moscow suspended the supply of gas and electricity to Finland due to its request to join NATO.

The next battery will be 100 times bigger, or about 20 metres in diameter and 10 metres high, with 1GWh of energy, Mr Ylönen said.

"With the economies of scale, if we go 100 times bigger, the price won't be 100 times larger. It will be 20–30 times larger.

"It will be in Finland, but we are already negotiating several sites internationally."

Once the first of these larger designs is built and tested, others could be built rapidly, he said.

"I would [eventually] like to say that we are building 10 next year."

Record heat in the Arctic circle

The midnight sun shines at the border area between Finland and Norway in Kilpisjarvi, Enontekio, Finland, on June 22, 2020. Finland’s national meteorological institute has registered its hottest temperature for June since records began in 1844. Photograph: LEHTIKUVA/Reuters

From The Guardian:

 

Nordic countries have registered near-record temperatures over the weekend, including highs of 34C (93.2F) in some places.

The latest figures came after Finland’s national meteorological institute registered its hottest temperature for June since records began in 1844.

Kevo, in Lapland, recorded heat of 33.6C (92.5F) on Sunday, the hottest day since 1914 when authorities registered 34.7C (94.5F), said the STT news agency. Several parts of Sweden also reported record highs for June.

The high temperatures follow the record-breaking heatwave and wildfires that have caused devastation in parts of North America.

The intense heatwave has killed 95 people in the US state of Oregon alone, its governor said on Sunday. Hundreds are believed to have died from the heat in the US north-west and south-western Canada.

Michael Reeder, a professor of meteorology in the school of Earth, atmosphere and environment at Australia’s Monash University, said the events on the European and North American continents were not unlinked.

Reeder has written about the meteorological conditions that allowed for the North American heatwave to form. He said a tropical low in the western Pacific, near Japan, had disturbed the atmosphere, creating ripples around the hemisphere as what is known as a Rossby wave.

That wave broke off the west of Canada, triggering the conditions for the heatwave.

“It’s like plucking a guitar string. The disturbance propagated along the jet stream,” Reeder said.

“It gets to North America, it (amplified) and produced a big high pressure system in the middle part of the atmosphere.”

He said that had then kicked off another wave over the north Atlantic that then broke and produced the conditions for high temperatures in the Nordic regions.

“So from that perspective, the high temperatures over Scandinavia are directly linked to what happened in North America.”

From LiveScience:

On the summer solstice (June 20 — the longest day of the year) two European Union satellites recorded a scorching temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius ) on the ground in Arctic Siberia.

This isn't quite a new heat record; as a post on the EU's Copernicus satellite website noted, this egg-boiling temperature was detected only on the ground in Siberia's Sakha Republic, while the region's air temperature (the temperature people would actually feel while walking around) was a toasty 86 F (30 C).

However, that's still an anomalously high temperature for the Arctic Circle — and one that could exacerbate the region's melting permafrost, which is the only thing preventing ancient caches of greenhouse gases from reentering Earth's atmosphere, according to Gizmodo.

The EU's Copernicus Sentinal-3A and 3B satellites recorded the high temperatures in the midst of an ongoing heat wave over much of Siberia. The heat spike is, unfortunately, a predictable start to summer, following a spring that saw hundreds of wildfires scorching the Siberian countryside and blacking out major cities with blankets of smoke.

Many of these spring fires were "zombie fires," so named because they are thought to be the rekindled remains of wildfires that ignited the previous summer and were never fully extinguished. The zombie fires smoldered for months under winter ice and snow, fed by the carbon-rich peat below the surface. When the spring melt arrived, the old fires blazed anew, Live Science previously reported.

If last summer is any indication, the hot solstice temperatures are just the beginning. Precisely one year ago, on June 20, 2020, the same region of Siberia recorded the first 100 F (38 C) day above the Arctic Circle — the hottest temperature ever recorded there. The sweltering day in Siberia fits into a larger climate change trend. For years, average temperatures in the Arctic have been rising at a far faster rate than anywhere else on Earth, largely due to melting sea ice induced by man-made global warming.

This is the frigging Arctic, people.  Not the Middle East.  Nor Outback Australia.  It has to be obvious to everybody (except those whose salaries depend on their blind eyes) that climate change is happening right now.  We don't have to wait for another 30 years to see its consequences.  They're crystal clear.  Right now, And we must act now to prevent it getting worse.

Finland ends homelessness

Almost.

From Scoop.me

In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. The reason: The country applies the “Housing First” concept. Those affected by homelessness receive a small apartment and counselling – without any preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected thus make their way back into a stable life. And: All this is cheaper than accepting homelessness.

Finland is the only country in Europe where homelessness is in decline.  In 2008 you could see tent villages and huts standing between trees in the parks of Helsinki. Homeless people had built makeshift homes in the middle of Finland’s capital city. They were exposed to harsh weather conditions.

Since the 1980s, Finnish governments had been trying to reduce homelessness. Short-term shelters were built. However, long-term homeless people were still left out. There were too few emergency shelters and many affected people did not manage to get out of homelessness: They couldn’t find jobs – without a housing address. And without any job, they couldn’t find a flat. It was a vicious circle. Furthermore, they had problems applying for social benefits. All in all, homeless people found themselves trapped.

But in 2008 the Finnish government introduced a new policy for the homeless: It started implementing the “Housing First” concept. Since then the number of people affected has fallen sharply.

Finland has set itself a target: Nobody should have to live on the streets – every citizen should have a residence.

And the country is successful: It is the only EU-country where the number of homeless people is declining.

It is NGOs such as the “Y-Foundation” that provide housing for people in need. They take care of the construction themselves, buy flats on the private housing market and renovate existing flats. The apartments have one to two rooms. In addition to that, former emergency shelters have been converted into apartments in order to offer long-term housing.

“It was clear to everyone that the old system wasn’t working; we needed radical change,” says Juha Kaakinen, Director of the Y-Foundation.

Homeless people turn into tenants with a tenancy agreement. They also have to pay rent and operating costs. Social workers, who have offices in the residential buildings, help with financial issues such as applications for social benefits.

Juha Kaakinen is head of the Y-Foundation. The NGO receives discounted loans from the state to buy housing. Additionally, social workers caring for the homeless and future tenants are paid by the state. The Finnish lottery, on the other hand, supports the NGO when it buys apartments on the private housing market. The Y-Foundation also receives regular loans from banks. The NGO later uses the rental income to repay the loans.

“We had to get rid of the night shelters and short-term hostels we still had back then. They had a very long history in Finland, and everyone could see they were not getting people out of homelessness. We decided to reverse the assumptions.” (Juha Kaakinen, Director of the Y-Foundation)

The policy applied in Finland is called “HousingFirst”. It reverses conventional homeless aid. More commonly, those affected are expected to look for a job and free themselves from their psychological problems or addictions. Only then they get help in finding accommodation.

“Housing First”, on the other hand, reverses the path: Homeless people get a flat – without any preconditions. Social workers help them with applications for social benefits and are available for counselling in general. In such a new, secure situation, it is easier for those affected to find a job and take care of their physical and mental health.

The result is impressive: 4 out of 5 homeless people will be able to keep their flat for a long time with “Housing First” and lead a more stable life.

In the last 10 years, the “Housing First” programme provided 4,600 homes in Finland. In 2017 there were still about 1,900 people living on the streets – but there were enough places for them in emergency shelters so that they at least didn’t have to sleep outside anymore.

Creating housing for people costs money. In the past 10 years, 270 million euros were spent on the construction, purchase and renovation of housing as part of the “Housing First” programme. However, Juha Kaakinen points out, this is far less than the cost of homelessness itself. Because when people are in emergency situations, emergencies are more frequent: Assaults, injuries, breakdowns. The police, health care and justice systems are more often called upon to step in – and this also costs money.  In comparison, “Housing First” is cheaper than accepting homelessness: Now, the state spends 15,000 euros less per year per homeless person than before.

With 4 out of 5 people keeping their flats, “Housing First” is effective in the long run. In 20 percent of the cases, people move out because they prefer to stay with friends or relatives – or because they don’t manage to pay the rent. But even in this case they are not dropped. They can apply again for an apartment and are supported again if they wish.

Of course, there is no guarantee for success. Especially homeless women are more difficult to reach: They conceal their emergency situation more often: They live on the streets less frequently and rather stay with friends or acquaintances.

[The author of this piece is Kontrast.at/Kathrin Glösel ]

The best solutions to social problems are often not the free-market ones favoured by neo-liberalism.  It turns out that the Finnish solution to homelessness saves money as well as being more humane.  Will those infatuated with neo-liberalism learn from this?  Prolly not.

Viking economics

Scandinavia provides an alternative vision of economics and democracy to the kind of red-in-tooth-and-claw version that the USA practices, and which neo-liberals and economists have tried to make the standard ideology around the world.  Though policies differ in detail from country to country within Scandinavia, the general picture is one of high taxes, comprehensive welfare states, low inequality, low crime, low unemployment, free education and free health, and according to surveys, some of the happiest people in the developed world.  Despite all these things that the neo-liberal right deeply despises, somehow they also manage to have reasonable per capita growth (for developed countries—developing countries tend to have higher growth).

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

I’d like to tell you I’ve been away working hard on a study tour of the Nordic economies – or perhaps tracing the remnant economic impact of the Hanseatic League (look it up) – but the truth is we were too busy enjoying the sights around Scandinavia and the Baltic for me to spend much time reading the books and papers I’d taken along.

But since I always like telling people what I did on my holidays (oh, those fjords and waterfalls we saw while sailing up the coast of Norway to the Arctic Circle!), I’ve been looking up facts and figures in a forthcoming book comparing the main developed countries on many criteria, by my mate Professor Rod Tiffen and others at Sydney University (including me).

But first, the travelogue. Prosperous countries have a lot in common but Scandinavia is different. I have seen the future and, while some might regard it as political correctness gone mad, it looked pretty good to me.

One aspect in which the Nordics (strictly speaking, Finland isn’t Scandinavian because it’s a republic rather than a monarchy and because the Finnish language bears no relation to Danish, Swedish or Norwegian) are way more advanced is the role of women.

All of them have had female prime ministers or presidents, they have loads of female politicians and we were always seeing women out at business functions with their male colleagues.

Governments spend much more on childcare and they’re big on men actually taking paid paternity leave. They have “family zones” in trains and we were struck by how many men we saw by themselves pushing prams.

They’re much more relaxed on sexual matters. These days, any new building in Sweden will have unisex toilets, with rows of cubicles and not a urinal to be seen. Neat way of sidestepping debates about which toilet transgender people should use.

The Nordics are well ahead of us on environmental matters. They’re bicycle crazy (a big health hazard for tourists who don’t know they’re standing in a bike lane) and drive small cars.

They’re obsessed with organic food and even hotel guests are expected to recycle their paper and plastic. One hotel we stayed at in Copenhagen was so concerned to save the planet its policy was to make up the rooms only every fourth day.

The Norwegians have made and, unlike the rest of us, saved their pile by selling oil to the world but you get the feeling it troubles their conscience. So, like the other Nordics, they have ambitious targets to move to renewables and, to that end, are making more use of carbon pricing than most other countries.

The truth is, I’ve long wanted to see Scandinavia for myself. It’s a part of the world that most politicians and economists prefer not to think about. Why not? Because its performance laughs at all they believe about how to run a successful economy.

Everyone in the English-speaking economies knows big government is the enemy of efficiency. The less governments do, the better things go. The lower we can get our taxes, the more we’ll grow.

Just ask Scott Morrison. As he loves to say, no one ever taxed their way to prosperity. What’s he doing to encourage jobs and growth? Cutting taxes, of course. That’s Economics 101 – so obvious it doesn’t need explaining.

Trouble is, the Nordics have some of the highest rates of government spending in the world and pay among the highest levels of taxation but have hugely successful economies.

The Danes pay 46 per cent of gross domestic product in total taxes, the Finns pay 44 per cent, the Swedes 43 per cent and the Norwegians 38 per cent (compared with our 28 per cent).

Measured by GDP per person, Norway's standard of living is well ahead of America's. Then come the Danes and the Swedes – at around the average for 18 developed democracies (as are we) – with the Finns just beating out the Brits and the French further down the list.

The Nordics are also good at managing their government budgets.

We all know unions are bad for jobs and growth and we’ve succeeded in getting our rate of union membership down to 17 per cent. Funny that, the Nordics still have the highest rates (up around two-thirds), so, do they have lots of strikes? No.

The four Nordics are right at the top when it comes to the smallest gap between rich and poor, with Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States right at the bottom.

Other indicators show that (provided you ignore the long snowy winters) the Nordics enjoy a high quality of life and not just a high material standard of living.

Note this, I’m not claiming that the Scandinavians are more economically successful because of their big government and high taxes. No, I’m saying that, contrary to the unshakable beliefs of many economists and all conservative politicians, there’s little connection between economic success and the size of government.

So how do the Scandis do it? I read this on the wall of an art museum in Aarhus, Denmark: “In a society we are mutually interdependent. Strengthening the spirit of community, we improve society for all of us as a group but we also provide each individual with better opportunities for realising his or her own potential.”

Source
Note: US population growth rates are higher than Scandinavian

Source

So deeply are the neo-liberal tenets held in Anglophone countries that no matter how much evidence is produced showing that the Scandinavian model works, I doubt that we will ever move towards their system.  Sad.

The answer to homelessness

Finnish social housing (Source)

From The New Daily:

Finland has the distinction of being the only European country where homelessness has decreased in recent years, and the rest of the world is starting to take notice.

Between 2008 and 2016, long-term homelessness in Finland was slashed by a staggering 35 per cent.

By contrast, homelessness in Australia rose 13.7 per cent over the five years to 2016, according to census data.

A decade ago, Finland decided to tackle chronic homelessness by providing permanent housing — individual apartments rather than temporary shelter accommodation — to rough sleepers and others in the grip of long-term homelessness. It’s success has been remarkable.

The model is known as Housing First.

One of Finland’s biggest advocates of Housing First is Juha Kaakinen, CEO of Y-Foundation, a social housing organisation which has provided more than 6000 homes to former rough sleepers, and 10,000 homes to low-income families and individuals.

“Housing is the foundation for solving other issues. That was the change in thinking,” Mr Kaakinen said.

“You don’t need to be ‘housing ready’, it’s not a reward after you’ve solved your issues. It’s the basis for solving them.”

The program has been both a social and economic success.

Providing a homeless person with permanent housing in a supported housing unit saves the government approximately €15,000 ($23,400) per person per year, according to an evaluation of the program by the Technical University of Tampere, with savings mainly coming from reduced use of health services and institutional care.