City Scale Demand Side Management in Three Different-Sized District Heating Systems

Jussi Vimpari,Seppo Junnila,Kaisa Kontu,Petri Penttinen

doi:10.3390/en11123370

Abstract

Demand side management can add flexibility to a district heating (DH) system by balancing the customer’s hourly fluctuating heat demand. The aim of this study is to analyze how different demand side management control strategies, implemented into different customer segments, impact DH production. A city scale heat demand model is constructed from the hourly heat consumption data of different customer segments. This model is used to build several demand side management scenarios to examine the effect of them on both, the heat producer, and the customers. The simulations are run for three different-sized DH systems, representing typical DH systems in Finland, in order to understand how the demand side management implementations affect the production. The findings imply that the demand side management strategy must be built individually for each specific DH system; the changing consumption profiles of different customer segments should be taken into consideration. The results show that the value of demand side management for a DH companies remains low (less than 2% in cost savings), having an effect mostly upon the medium loads without any significant decrease in annual peak heat loads. Also, the findings reflect that the DH pricing models should be developed to make demand side management more attractive to DH customers.

Highlights

Smart energy systems are considered as a backbone of a “smart city” [1]
District heating and cooling (DHC) systems have an important role to play in integrating energy systems into a smart city; it is argued that they are “important tools” for reaching energy targets such as those set by the European Union (EU) [3]
A general assumption is that DSM actions within district heating (DH) systems, without significant energy-saving measures in heating, stabilize consumption profiles, reducing the peak demand and the cost of production

Summary

Introduction

Smart energy systems are considered as a backbone of a “smart city” [1]. Lund et al [2] define smart energy systems as the integration of multiple different energy sectors (electricity, heating, cooling, industry, buildings, and transportation) with intelligent control and energy storage, and with the customers playing a central role. Consumers will be considered solely as points of consumption and as customers who act as an integrated part of the system itself. District heating and cooling (DHC) systems have an important role to play in integrating energy systems into a smart city; it is argued that they are “important tools” for reaching energy targets such as those set by the European Union (EU) [3]. DHC systems can engage consumers in several ways: Customers can act as prosumers, supplying waste heat to the system [4,5], or as flexible consumers with heat storage opportunities. The DHC network’s flexible heat and cold energy storing capability will have an increasingly important role in the future where fluctuating energy sources will become more dominant.

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