Kurumsal Sosyal Sorumluluk dergisi - KSS Türkiye 31

“Coming Soon: Free tools and data for
heat network planning”
Joshua Thumim, Head of
Research at the Centre for
Sustainable Energy in Bristol,
introduces a new initiative
designed to dramatically reduce
the cost of planning local heat
networks in Europe.
Planning a local heat network is
an expensive and complex business. This is hardly surprising,
since district heating schemes are place-specific systems
designed for the individual neighbourhoods they serve. There’s
no off-the-shelf option.
The networks themselves are conceptually straightforward; the
top-level decisions are where the heat supply will be located
and which buildings will be connected, and what is the most
technically and economically efficient route to join the two.
In practice however, and even in a relatively small
neighbourhood, these choices can combine to produce a
mind-boggling number of possibilities of which only a fraction
are likely to be viable. And that’s assuming that you have good
information on factors such as local heat demand and the likely
cost of digging up the roads, but also the ability to use that
information to model the techno-economic performance of a
proposed network.
So the challenge can be framed as a ‘search problem’: out of
the hundreds of possible heat networks that you could build
in a particular area, which is the best? Which buildings should
be included, where should the energy centre go, how should
we route the pipes that connect them, and – something often
forgotten by planners – what does all this mean in practice for
the occupants of the buildings being connected?
The first step is to identify a small number of sensible
candidates from the large set of possible networks. This is
known as pre-feasibilty work. Once complete, more detailed
analysis is undertaken to refine the list and identify a preferred
option. This is known as feasibilty work, and only once this stage
is fulfilled can full engineering design work be undertaken.
The pre-feasibility stage is of critical importance, since it is here
that potential solutions are identified or ruled out. However,
public authorities often lack the tools and capacity to do this
themselves, so typically commission this work from a limited
number of consultancies who tend to undertake it more or less
‘manually’ – for example, selecting areas of high spatial heat
demand density from heat demand maps, and then looking
for potential network solutions within these areas using various
rules of thumb.
This process is expensive, inefficient and slow, and does not
tend to build capacity within the public authorities. It also fails
to consider the full range of possible networks in a given area.
What if it didn’t have to be like this? What if the energy system
maps, software and modelling tools for identifing the best
heat-network options were freely available to local authorities,
energy companies and other agencies?
We believe that this would reduce planning costs and
development time, and bring the benefits of heat networks
to more people, sooner. And this is exactly what THERMOS is
attempting to do.
Thermal Energy Resource Modelling and Optimisation System
is a £3m EC Horizon 2020 funded research project which
will provide the methods, data, and tools to enable public
authorities and other stakeholders to undertake sophisticated
thermal energy system planning far more rapidly and cheaply
than they can today.
In a nutshell, THERMOS aims to make local heat networks
cheaper to develop by providing high resolution energy system
maps, free software for identifying viable heat networks, and
perhaps most importantly, sharing experiences between city
energy planners, during and after the development of these
tools.
Of course, this won’t make the actual building of district
heating networks cheaper or quicker, but it should dramatically
accelerate the pace and reduce the cost of identifying the most
promising networks in a given area, and help ensure that the
systems that do go ahead are the right ones.
What THERMOS offers
Specifically, THERMOS will:
• Develop and publish a state-of-the-art methodology for
developing address-level energy system maps, to enable
public authorities and other stakeholders to efficiently
(and in some cases more rapidly) plan for the upgrading,
refurbishment and expansion of existing heating and
cooling network systems in any given area.
• Produce a set of such maps for a series of four ‘pilot cities’
(the local authority areas of Islington borough council in
London in the United Kingdom, Warsaw in Poland, Jelgava in
Latvia and Granollers in Spain.
• Develop and publish models for analysing these maps to
answer a range of questions required for thermal energy
system planning by city, regional and national stakeholders.
• Incorporate these models in a free, open-source software
application tailored to the specific needs of different pilot
city stakeholders.
• Work closely with energy planning stakeholders to support
the use of the new tools in real-world energy planning.
• Support the implementation of the energy system mapping
methodology, and subsequently the use of the software, in
a further four ‘replication’ cities or regions (specifically Cascais
in Portugal, Alba Iulia in Romania, Berlin and London).
During and beyond the three-year lifetime of the programme
itself, THERMOS will engage in a wider programme of
dissemination and communication to maximise the impacts
of the project. And after 2019, our hope is that we will leave a
legacy through open-sourcing the methods data and tools, so
that the benefits are spread far and wide.
The four pilot cities were chosen because of their potential to
plan and design a real-world system using the THERMOS tool.
Each has different levels of experience and know-how with
planning district heating. Between them, our pilot cities have
a deep well of knowledge of the challenges facing thermal
network planners. We’ll be using this to develop software that
builds on real-world experience, and helps us understand
what best-practice looks like - and how it can be replicated
elsewhere.
The four replication cities involved in the project – Cascais, Alba
Iulia, Berlin and London - all have the desire and potential to
expand, modernise or re-introduce
They’ll play a crucial role in road-testing the THERMOS planning
methodology and software to identify optimum areas for new
networks and the best ways to refurbish existing ones. The
replication cities will ensure that the tools THERMOS develops
are fit-for-purpose and work to support real-world energy
planning processes.
And after that, the THERMOS resources will become available
for everyone to use.
Our plan is for local authorities and others to access the tools
and data through an online software application which is
simple to use, but which also reflects the detailed models
required to underpin local network planning - an interesting
design challenge in itself!
At the moment the software is under development,
progressing well in the capable hands of our software team
here at CSE in Bristol, with the all important energy system
modelling algorithms being created by THERMOS partner
Imperial College London.
We think THERMOS could be the key to unlocking the huge
potential of district heating and cooling networks, and if we do
our job well, many more parts of the UK and Europe will be in
a position to benefit from an energy system which offers the
much-needed low carbon and low cost energy supplies of the
future.
THERMOS CITIES
Pilot City Replication City
Granollers, Spain Cascais, Portugal
Islington, UK London (GLA), UK
Jelgava, Latvia Alba Iulia, Romania
Warsaw, Poland Berlin (dena), Germany
Working with CSE on THERMOS
Our partners include universities, local authorities and city-wide
authorities, energy and environmental agencies and specialist
consultants:
UK: Imperial College, London, Greater London Authority,
London Borough of Islington; Spain: Creara Consultores
SL, Ajuntament de Granollers; Poland: Krajowa Agencja
Poszanowania Energii SA, Miasto Stoleczne Warszawa;
Latvia: Vides Investiciju Fonds SIA; Jelgavas Dome; Denmark:
Aalborg Universitet; Germany: ICLEI European Secretariat
GMBH, Deutsche Energie-Agentur GMBH; Romania: Primaria
Municipiului Alba Iulia; Portugal: Municipio de Cascais
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