Abstract
Considering the European Union (EU) climate targets, the heating sector should be decarbonized by 80% to 95% up to 2050. Thus, the macro-trends forecast increasing energy efficiency and focus on the use of renewable gas or the electrification of heat generation. This has implications for the business models of urban electricity and in particular natural gas distribution network operators (DNOs): When the energy demand decreases, a disproportionately long grid is operated, which can cause a rise of grid charges and thus the gas price. This creates a situation in which a self-reinforcing feedback loop starts, which increases the risk of gas grid defection. We present a mixed integer linear optimization model to analyze the interdependencies between the electricity and gas DNOs’ and the building owners’ investment decisions during the transformation path. The results of the investigation in a real grid area are used to validate the simulation setup of a sensitivity analysis of 27 types of building collectives and five grid topologies, which provides a systematic insight into the interrelated system. Therefore, it is possible to identify building and grid configurations that increase the risk of a complete gas grid shutdown and those that should be operated as a flexibility option in a future renewable energy system.
Highlights
The heat sector accounts for about 48% of the global final energy, 27% of which comes from renewable sources [1]
Thereby, we address three questions that are relevant for distribution network operators (DNOs), policy makers, and energy economists:
We introduce a linearized mixed integer nonlinear program (MINLP): The optimization problem is to minimize the total cost of heating in all buildings in an area by retrofitting the heating system and the building surface
Summary
The heat sector accounts for about 48% of the global final energy, 27% of which comes from renewable sources [1]. In the European Union (EU), heating and cooling applications account for about 50% of final energy demand, of which 42% are gas-fired and 12% are electricity-based systems [2]. Two macro-trends can be identified: On the one side, primarily gas-based systems fired with CO2 neutral gases and carbon capture technologies are used to mitigate emissions, as suggested by Irish, British [3,4,5], Chinese [6,7], and US [8,9,10,11] studies. A strong electrification of the heat generation is predicted. In this scenario, gas-fired systems are mostly substituted by electrical heat
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