Evaluating the cost of heat for end users in ultra low temperature district heating networks with booster heat pumps

Jacopo Vivian, Giuseppe Emmi, Angelo Zarrella, Xavier Jobard, Dirk Pietruschka and Michele De Carli

Energy, 2018, vol. 153, issue C, 788-800

Abstract: A promising district heating concept consists of distributing the heat at temperatures below 45 °C and using booster heat pumps at the customers' substations to provide the appropriate temperature needed for space heating and domestic hot water production. As such, thermal networks would be able to abate heat losses and substantially increase the number of recoverable heat sources. At the same time, the supply temperature from the booster heat pumps can be tailored to the building supplied instead of being based on the most critical consumer. This work investigates the performance of booster heat pumps assuming network supply temperatures in the range between 15 °C and 45 °C. The impact of supply and return temperature on the levelized cost of heat for different end users was assessed. The parametric study shows the importance of the nominal network temperature difference in the design phase of the system in order to reach a good trade-off between initial investment and operating costs. The economic analysis shows that the system is already competitive with individual gas boilers provided that a local low-temperature heat source can be recovered with minor marginal costs.

Keywords: DHC networks; Booster heat pumps; Low temperature heat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544218306893
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:153:y:2018:i:c:p:788-800

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2018.04.081

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().