Techno-economic Analysis Of Integrated Energy Systems At Urban District Level – A Swedish Case Study

Abstract

Within the Nordic countries, distributed heat and power supply technologies, like domestic scale heat pumps and photovoltaics, are challenging the current centralized district energy infrastructure. An increasing number of customers decide to disconnect from the traditional heating network by comparing the bill to the potential economic savings which can be generated by a residential heat pump system. However, this approach can be considered valid only on a short-term perspective. This paper presents a new approach to compare the techno-economic performance of alternative technologies, based on their lifetime average cost of generation. The proposed analysis is able to determine the optimal energy infrastructure at urban district level. Within this solution, operators, city planners and users will have a solid reference for their decision making process on resources investment. From a first step analysis of a few Swedish case studies, it was found that a district heating based system is more techno-economically efficient compared to the distributed alternative. By comparing the district heating production cost to its final price, a significant profit margin for the utility was qualitatively highlighted. Thus, from a customer perspective, on the medium run, the district heating tariff can be adapted and the estimated savings from switching to a residential heat pump system can be nullified.