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. 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.
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
Importance for society:
E2District aimed to make DHC systems more efficient, intelligent and cheaper. The project was 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 was it necessary that advancements were made on the technical side but, also, end-user behaviour had to be integrated into the whole system.
The overall objectives:
The project’s main objective was 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. To enable above, an additional focus was to develop an innovative cloud-based software infrastructure and people engagement strategy.
