Abstract
Abstract. In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decrease dependency on depleting fossil fuel resources the shift to a renewable energy system is necessary. District heating and cooling systems are a viable solution to provide heat and cold in urban environments. Renewable heat and cold sources that may get incorporated in future urban energy systems will not provide the same high temperature output as current fossil fuel fired systems. Fifth generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) systems are decentralized, bi-directional, close to ground temperature networks that use direct exchange of warm and cold return flows and thermal storage to balance thermal demand as much as possible. 5GDHC offers a way to incorporate low temperature renewable heat sources including shallow geothermal energy, as well as reduce total demand by recuperating generated heat from cooling and generated cold from heating. The large scale of 5GDHC allows for optimal design of technical parts like heat pumps and thermal storage vessels, while increasing overall system efficiency by incorporating a large variety of supply and demand profiles. We provide a definition for 5GDHC and show how this concept differs from conventional district heating systems. The Mijnwater system in Heerlen, the Netherlands is showing what a city-level 5GDHC system can look like.
Highlights
In order to keep the effects of climate change limited, the United Nations (UN) have agreed to keep the average global temperature increase below 2 ◦C, compared to pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC, 2018), while pursuing efforts to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 ◦C
In the European Union, buildings consume 50 % of the total energy demand, emitting 26 % of CO2 emissions (European Commission, 2018). Most of these buildings can be found in cities, towns and suburbs, as 72.5 % of EU inhabitants live in urban areas (EuroStat, 2016)
An upgrade of the existing mixing facility is planned to be completed by 2022, but the total capacity will not be enough to completely cover demand (Wiebes, 2018; ECN, 2017). This results in a double incentive to shift to a new energy system in the Netherlands, one that is both low in greenhouse gas emissions and does not use natural gas from Groningen
Summary
In order to keep the effects of climate change limited, the United Nations (UN) have agreed to keep the average global temperature increase below 2 ◦C, compared to pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC, 2018), while pursuing efforts to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 ◦C. An upgrade of the existing mixing facility is planned to be completed by 2022, but the total capacity will not be enough to completely cover demand (Wiebes, 2018; ECN, 2017) This results in a double incentive to shift to a new energy system in the Netherlands, one that is both low in greenhouse gas emissions and does not use natural gas from Groningen. These 5GDHC systems work with near-ground temperatures and allow for bi-directional exchange of heat and cold between connected buildings, facilitated by seasonal storage This way the total energy demand in a district can be greatly reduced, while renewable sources like solar thermal or geothermal can be incorporated to cover the residual demand.
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