District heating is therefore the ideal form of heating supply for industrial plants, office buildings, apartment buildings, housing developments, hospitals, hotels, supermarkets, schools and universities.
Key facts
The principle
Heat is produced during the generation of electricity. Whereas conventional power stations do not utilize this waste heat, combined heat and power plants feed it into the district heating network. Heat energy is generated centrally in state-of-the-art power plants, which deploy the latest technology standards, directly transported to homes and fed into central heating systems via heat exchangers. The cooled water is then pumped back to the heat power plant. Very little energy is lost during transport.
The combined generation of electricity and heat uses fuel - primarily environmentally friendly natural gas at SWM - much more efficiently than conventional power stations. Combined heat and power plants achieve efficiency of up to 90%, whereas even modern coal-fired power stations only convert around 45% of the energy used into electricity.
