Abstract
This paper analyses optimal electricity investments (PV and battery storage) to decarbonise heat supply in residential buildings under different heat pump and energy retrofitting scenarios in a detailed representation of the Swiss power and heating system. The sensitivity of PV and storage deployment, including lithium-ion (LiB) and vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB), with respect to distribution network capacity is also investigated. We propose an open-source dispatch sector coupling model (GRIMSEL-AH) to minimise energy system costs (social planner perspective) for heating and electricity supply in Switzerland with hourly and daily time resolution for electricity and heating respectively. Moreover, our representation of the Swiss energy system includes various types of consumers and urban settings which are represented with monitored electricity demand data for each sector and simulated heat demand data at the building level for the residential sector. We find that under a “business as usual” heat pump deployment and retrofitting rate, the optimal electricity investments correspond to 27.8 GWp of PV combined with 16.9 GW (33.8 GWh) for LiB and 1.9 GW (7.6 GWh) for VRFB. For this case, 57% (13.3 TWth/year) of the residential heat demand is covered by heat pumps with a total installed capacity of 19.7 GWth by 2050 (capacity exogenously set with its operation optimised). With increasing heat pump deployment, retrofitting rates are found to have a large impact on the investment in storage and a 100% heat pump scenario for the residential sector appears to be feasible. Our results show that heat pumps do not only decarbonise heat but also provide extra flexibility to the power system, since they increase local PV self-consumption, resulting in higher PV deployment. The model and the methodology presented in this study can be applied to other countries.
Highlights
Climate change mitigation requires the reduction of greenhouse gas emission across the whole energy sector and all economic sectors
We show that a residential sector which is fully heated by Heat pumps (HPs) is feasible, and interestingly, energy retrofitting has the largest impact on storage deployment with more than twice the storage needed without energy retrofitting compared to 1%–2% retrofitting rate p.a
We present an open-source sector coupling model, GRIMSEL-AH, which distinguishes among various types of consumers and urban settings to capture the increasing complexity of the power sector and integration of heat demand
Summary
Climate change mitigation requires the reduction of greenhouse gas emission across the whole energy sector (i.e. beyond the power sector) and all economic sectors. The residential sector is of particular interest since in 2018, energy consumption in households was responsible for 20% and 17% of the CO2 emissions in the European Union and Switzerland respectively [1,2]. Heating represented 80% of the final energy consumption in Swiss households, with space heating and hot water contributing to 65% and 15% respectively. Heat supply is dominated by fossil fuel technologies [3], in particular, fuel oil and natural gas jointly covered 66% of space heating and 54% of domestic hot water demands. Heat pumps (HPs) are the most promising technology to decarbonise the heat supply while promoting renewable energy integration in buildings [4], due to both high thermodynamic efficiency and the possibility of using renewable electricity as a source. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) identified up to 14 specific applications to be provided by batteries in future energy systems [18], including distribution and transmission grid upgrade deferral as an alternative to distribution network reinforcement and expansion
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