Comment by baq

The issue we have in Finland is the assymetric electricity usage between winter and summer. This is driven by the need for heating.

In the past, district heating systems burned coal. Now that's out the window we haven't got enough to burn. We do burn waste products from forestry, trash and the like but there's not enough to go around before you start felling trees en-mass just to heat a city.

A lot of municipalities in Finland are now starting to play with thermal storage. There's this sand battery, but there's even more hot water storage being built and has been built.

In the medium term, winter electricity production and consumption is starting to become a bit of a risk for us.

It doesn't just make sense in the very far north, it makes sense just about anywhere that you'd have many people living close together (i.e. even a village).

Most homes don't need to have their own electricity generators, their own sewage treatment systems, or their own water wells, they hook into utility infrastructure.

In a lot of european towns and cities, heat is also a utility you can hook into, e.g. my apartment has no heating infrastructure in it, we just get all of our heat through a pipe connected to a nearby heat reservoir that's primarily loaded with waste heat from a gas power turbine. Within the next couple years though, the heat from gas power will be supplemented with the biggest heat pump in the world though [1]

It's not just a city thing though, I have friends who live in a village of 300 people in the Alps and they also have a utility district heating system in the village.

[1] https://www.man-es.com/company/press-releases/press-details/...

> near the North Pole.

Finland is not near the North Pole. Lahti is at 61°, right in the middle between Greece and the North Pole.

But yes, heating needs are higher than in most European or North American populated areas.