Abstract
District heating is an efficient method of delivering thermal energy to buildings. The latest, 4th generaton of the technology, can be applied to integrate multiple renewable and low-carbon energy sources into the thermal energy mix. Domestic heat demand in Ireland is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, prominently oil and gas. Despite the proven benefits of district heating, it has been underutilized in Ireland. Opportunities lie for the implementation of district heating networks alongside newly built buildings in Ireland. This study determines the cost-optimum design of a secondary district heating network, serving an Irish apartment block, built to the most recent building energy standards. Supply temperature, return temperature, and pipe diameter are varied to minimise lifetime cost of the network. Mathematical modelling is applied, through MATLAB software, to achieve this cost-optimisation. 1 × 1010 possible pipe configurations are examined for a range of thirty different supply and return temperatures. The optimum supply and return temperatures are calculated to be 61 °C and 27 °C respectively.
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