Geo-Solar District Heating – Lessons Learnt from a not Realised Project

Abstract

For the new housing area with approx. 130 low energy residential houses, located in Kassel, Germany, various supply concepts are investigated. Main objective of the project is the development of an innovative and optimised heat supply concept based on renewable energies and a low temperature district heating for later realisation.During the course of the project several heat supply concepts have been investigated and compared to give an input to the decision and realisation process. A promising heat supply concept is based on a central ground source heat pump in combination with a low temperature district heating (40°C supply temperature) for space heating and decentralised solar thermal systems for domestic hot water preparation. The advantages of this supply variant are comparable low annual heating costs and about 60% lower CO2-emissions in comparison to the reference system (decentralized air / water heat pump with solar thermal system).Due to time constrains it was decided not to realise the above mentioned energy concept. However, the research project took up the task to investigate the transferability of the concept in technological and economical perspectives to other locations and boundary conditions. From the results of the study the importance of a very high connection rate can be highlighted. Also the question of the particular business models for such capital demanding projects (high investment costs for the heating grid vs. low energy demand/sales) has been regarded.