Investigation on Individual and Collective PV Self-Consumption for a Fifth Generation District Heating Network

Jacopo Vivian, Mattia Chinello, Angelo Zarrella and Michele De Carli
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Jacopo Vivian: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy
Mattia Chinello: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy
Angelo Zarrella: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy
Michele De Carli: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Renewable Energy Communities have been recently introduced in European legislation to promote distributed generation from renewable energy sources. In fact, they allow to produce and consume energy from shared local power plants. Low temperature district heating and cooling networks with distributed heat pumps have demonstrated their capability to exploit renewable and waste heat sources in the urban environment. Therefore, they are considered a promising infrastructure to help decarbonize the building sector. As their main operating cost is the electricity purchased by the utility for heat pumps and circulation pumps, this work investigates whether a Renewable Energy Community could help mitigate such cost by sharing electricity produced by local photovoltaic (PV) systems. The research relies on computer simulations performed with both physical and statistical models for the evaluation of electrical load profiles at the district level. Results show that due to the different seasonality between heating demand and PV production, the increase in self-consumption due to the distributed heat pumps is lower than 10%. The use of batteries does not seem convenient for the same reason. The environmental benefit of the proposed system is evident, with CO 2 emissions reduced by 72–80% compared to the current situation depending on PV power installed. It also emerged that PV sharing significantly improves the self-consumption at the district level, in particular when the installed PV power is limited (+45%). In conclusion, results suggest that current incentives on PV-sharing make Renewable Energy Communities a viable option to improve the techno-economic performance of fifth-generation district heating and cooling networks.

Keywords: Renewable Energy Community; PV; district heating and cooling; heat pumps; collective self-consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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