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Unlike geothermal heat, Industrial heat is too spread out.

The quantity of heat may be comparable, but because of wide area of distribution, it is not practical to tap it. By wide area, I mean the various sources of heat in any industrial plant.

Also, industries would not really prefer if you want to have equipment to tap waste heat at various points in their shops.

Even in the example you give, of a turbine outlet, it is economical and practical, only because the heat is concentrated in the exhaust. However, most plants that have turbines, do recoup energy from turbine exhausts.



You could say the same about solar.

Personally, I think residential solar is less preferable than commercial installations where you can benefit from greater centralization, but that said, residential solar seems to have done fine.

Now on the other hand, solar has less moving parts, so the reliability is greater and the distributed nature may be less important.


In solar, there are no naturally occurring concentrated sources of energy. We have to concentrate it in certain ways, or use solar panels.

Residential solar will definitely reduce load and transmission losses. However a broad strategy must be required by governments to plan and establish solar plants.

For example, it makes sense to have a coherent solar planning policy taking into account the huge consumers of electricity (cities and industries) and planning solar plants near them, reducing the losses in transmissions (which can go upto 33% or more). Additionally, if the production and consumption are close by, transmissions can be made with lower voltage and higher currents, perhaps even HVDC, to unlock even more efficiencies.


Doesn't having electricity generation distributed reduce transmission loss although?




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