Summary
District Heating (DH) is expected to grow fast in Europe and in the world. EU Strategy for Heating and Cooling is identifying DH as a technology to quickly reduce CO2-emissions, dependency of imported fossil fuels and to create more local jobs.
DH is used in more than 70 countries worldwide. Most countries in Europe has DH, with highest market share in Northern and Eastern Europe. All urban areas in Sweden and Denmark are connected to DH and the total market share in heating is higher than 60 %.
The challenge for DH is to overcome high capital expenditure, in other words improve the Return On Capital Employed (ROCE) - increase Revenues, Reduce operating costs and limit capital. The DH operators must be able to expand, build new networks, connect buildings that leave oil & gas. At the same time the operators must take care of existing assets – literally “buried assets”, thousands of kilometres of pipes, 30-70 years old.
Jensen Predictive Maintenance (JPM) is utilizing a window of opportunity; new technical enablers and new customer needs. Digitalization, new sensors, IoT, smart battery-free power supply and methods for big-data-analytics are enablers to develop JPM.
New customer needs are ensuring demand for JPM;
1. Need to better avoid large failures at pressurized DH-pipes.
2. Need to reduce cost from energy losses from smaller leakages.
3. Need to limit and defer replacement investments, use the pipes to end-of-life.
4. Need to optimize heat production and pumping work by using new sensor data.
JPM is based on advanced acoustic signal analysis, similar to technology to hunt foreign submarines in the Baltic Sea. Most of the analysis methods are proven in field.
JPM will open up a multi-million Euro market, in Europe then worldwide, with new local jobs. The customers will save energy and maximize utilization of their assets. If all DH operators in 27 countries would apply JPM on pipes older than from year 2000, the annual saving potential is 3 billion Euro per year and the postponed investments are worth 2 billion Euro per year. Each DH operator would then invest 1-4 million Euro in JPM and then buy annual services for 0,1-0,5 million Euro. Roughly 2 000 operators represent more than 80 % of the market.
AJAB is a small company with experience of large R&D-projects and spin-outs. We have strong strategic partners and close customer collaboration in order to ensure success. No competitor up-front yet.
