Steps towards modern trends in district heating

Abstract

This paper focuses on new trends in district heating a cooling (DHC) area and algorithms allowing incorporating new technologies and performing optimal control. Classical district heating usually means huge source (as heating plant) and set of pipes which transfer heat energy through a medium, mostly water, across whole town and chilled water is returning back to the plant. Let’s imagine a modern city where buildings are consuming only a fraction of the energy contrary to what buildings required in the past. And especially during sunny or windy days, they have energy to spare. Around of such modern city is not only the one big heating plant, but perhaps solar and wind farms, waste incinerators, industrial companies with energy surpluses. Simply in this modern city are dozens, perhaps hundreds of small energy producers that share pipe network or at least part of it. In such a district energy system, production planning is more difficult. And not only production, modern houses with minimal heat loss and data connections also allow to plan consumption more effectively. The aim is to achieve the best solution evaluated by the objective function, usually determined by minimizing the production and distribution costs and providing meets the needs of energy consumers. The method presented in this paper is based on a simulation using the proposed holonic distributed model. This model also introduces the idea of general prosumers strategy, where all active elements within the modern DHC system are represented by prosumer objects. The prosumers are perceived as objects able to actively participate in the planning and realization of the production and consumption of energy. It is assumed that the general behaviour of the object in DHC is the same, no matter how they differ in size and design. Thus, all the objects are defined by two characteristics - the ability to produce and consume. The model based on this basic principle, of course, with the most accurate information about the particular values at a time, object properties and other, should provide tools for simulation and control of modern DHC. In a broader perspective model can be applied to superior units such Smart Energy Grids - understood as a system integrating electricity (Smart Grids) and heat and cool (Smart Thermal Grids) features.