Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - E2District (Energy Efficient Optimised District Heating and Cooling)

Teaser

The problem/issue being addressedAs identified by the Heat Roadmap Europe, DH and CHP can fulfil 30% of the EU’s heating energy needs by 2030 rising to 50% by 2050, while district cooling will likely grow to satisfy 25% of cooling demands. This expansion will translate into...

Summary

The problem/issue being addressed
As identified by the Heat Roadmap Europe, DH and CHP can fulfil 30% of the EU’s heating energy needs by 2030 rising to 50% by 2050, while district cooling will likely grow to satisfy 25% of cooling demands. This expansion will translate into 5% reduction in the entire European primary energy need, 10% reduction in fossil fuels and 13% of all carbon emissions and achieve a significant reduction in European energy import dependency.
However, this vision is not possible through modernization and expansion alone but requires fundamental technological innovation that will make the next generation of district heating and cooling (DHC) systems highly efficient and cost effective to design, operate and maintain. The main barriers in the current state-of-practice include: lack of proper tools that support the holistic optimization of the whole life-cycle of a DHC system including concept, design and operation phase management; inflexibility of the existing DHC business models preventing dynamic energy efficient optimization of DHC assets and full adaptation to increasingly variable demand and operating conditions; limited customer engagement in the DHC energy “market” and support for future distributed generation and energy exchange between consumers and producers.

The focus of E2District is to develop an innovative cloud based software infrastructure and people engagement strategy to manage and support smart energy usage and decision making for DHC systems.

E2District’s key goals:
• Optimising DHC production and distribution asset usage
• Analysing and influencing behavioural demand
• Developing new DHC business models to achieve energy efficient districts
• Demonstrating and evaluating an innovative E2District Operations system

Important for society:
E2District aims to make DHC systems more efficient, intelligent and cheaper. The project is targeting energy cost savings of 30%, indicating that eventual widespread adoption of similar smart district heating and cooling infrastructures could deliver significant efficiencies and reduced costs over the long-term. To achieve these goals, not only is it necessary that advancements are made on the technical side but, also, end-user behaviour has to be integrated into the whole system.

The overall objectives:
The E2District project’s main objective is the development, deployment, validation and demonstration of a framework, which integrates innovative intelligent control, schedule optimization, diagnostics, behavioural changes and DHC simulation and business models in order to enable the design and operation of energy efficient district heating and cooling systems. This framework is to cover the whole life-cycle of the DHC system ranging from the concept and design phase all the way to the operation management. In order to achieve this objective the E2District project is structured in seven sub–objectives, which are detailed below. Moreover, the work carried out during the period towards the achievement and means of verification of each objective are described.

Work performed

There are four technical and three business sub-objective:
Technical Objective 1: Development of District Simulation Platform,
Achieved up to now:
• Definition of requirements and contribution to use-case specifications (WP1)
• Audit of the CIT pilot site (WP2 & WP5)
• Development of the simulation models (WP2)
• Adaption of the simulation models to the CIT pilot site (WP2)
Technical Objective 2: Development of intelligent adaptive DHC control and optimisation methods
Achieved up to now:
• Definition of requirements and contribution to use-case specification (WP1)
• Ongoing development of supervisory control and FDD algorithms (WP3)
• Ongoing integration of the control modules with the district operation system and the district simulator (WP4)
Technical Objective 3: Development of a behaviour analytics tool and to develop prosumer engagement tools and user interfaces that keep the human end user in the loop
Following has been achieved up to now:
• Definition of requirements and contribution to use-case specification (WP1)
• Development of behavioural models and demand flexibility KPIs (WP3)
• Ongoing development of prosumer engagement tools and behaviour demand response instrumentation (WP5)
Technical Objective 4: Development of a flexible District Operation System for the efficient, replicable and scalable deployment
Achieved up to now:
• Definition of requirements and contribution to use-case specification (WP1)
• Development of a DHC operation system platform and deployment at the CIT pilot site (WP4)
• Integration with the DHC simulation platform (WP2)
• Integration with the supervisory control algorithms (WP3)

Further to the four technical objectives outlined above there have been three business objectives defined. In the following we will state them and outline the work towards the achievement of these specific objectives that has been carried out so far.
Business objective 1: Develop novel business models
Achieved up to now:
• Definition of requirements and contribution to use-case specification (WP1)
• Definition of a business model methodological framework (WP6)
• Creation of business model canvases for the pilot sites in Cork and Varna (WP6)
Business Objective 2: Validation, evaluation, and demonstration of E2District platform
Achieved up to now:
• Definition of requirements and contribution to use-case specification (WP1)
• Definition of key performance indicators (WP1)
• Definition of a validation baseline in the CIT pilot site (WP5)
• Identification of replication pilot sites in Varna and Görlitz (in negotiation) (WP6)
Business objective 3: Development of strong and rigorous dissemination, exploitation and path-to-market strategies
Achieved up to now:
• A dissemination and communication plan has been created (WP6)
• The stakeholder advisory board has been created (WP6)
• Strong communication activities have been established, including a project web site, newsletters, Twitter, and LinkedIn (WP6)
• The project has been disseminated at conferences and events (WP6)
• Business plans are being devised and evaluated together with relevant stakeholders (WP6)

Final results

By achieving E2District project objectives, relevant improvements to economy, environment and society are expected.

The project is creating a replicable system that can be adapted for other similarly managed industrial and domestic sites – whether local, national or international. According to Heat Roadmap Europe, DH and CHP will fulfil 30% of the EU’s heating energy needs by 2030 rising to 50% by 2050 and the E2District system contribute to achieving this target and contribute towards European policy objectives and strategies. Widespread adoption of DHC systems in Europe will lead to cost savings of approx. 14 billion, the creation of an additional 220,000 jobs especially by European Cleanweb Start ups and SMEs and further integration of RES by 2050. The benefits of E2District’s contribution to the widespread adoption of DHC systems include:
The decrease in primary energy supply and especially fossil fuels and CO2 emissions will result in less fuel being required for heating needs
• Decreased annual costs of energy
• More jobs will be created in the DHC sector
• More renewable energy sources will be employed
District level heating could help achieve EU 2020 energy efficiency goals

Website & more info

More info: http://e2district.eu/.