District heating networks: enhancement of the efficiency

Ugis Sarma (), Girts Karnitis (), Janis Zuters () and Edvins Karnitis ()
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Ugis Sarma: Riga Technical University
Girts Karnitis: LU - University of Latvia
Janis Zuters: LU - University of Latvia
Edvins Karnitis: LU - University of Latvia

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Abstract: During the decades the district heating's (DH) advantages (more cost-efficient heat generation and reduced air pollution) overcompensated the additional costs of transmission and distribution of the centrally produced thermal energy to consumers. Rapid increase in the efficiency of low-power heaters, development of separated low heat density areas in cities reduce the competitiveness of the large centralized DH systems in comparison with the distributed cluster-size networks and even local heating. Reduction of transmission costs, enhancement of the network efficiency by optimization of the design of the DH networks become a critical issue. The methodology for determination of the key drivers of the cost-efficiency of the DH networks to implement the most efficient (cost-minimal) thermal energy transmission was developed in this study. An inductive benchmarking modelling was applied; the general causal regularity is based on the observations of specific cases, thus determining the relationships between the network's design and thermal indicators as predictors and transmission costs as the target variable. The key drivers of the network efficiency were disclosed-the network length and the largest inner diameter of the pipes. The methodology is applicable for use by municipalities and heat providers for the heating planning of the new housing developments as well as renovation and/or expansion of the existing DH networks.

Keywords: district heating; network design; data mining; benchmarking methodologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-reg and nep-ure
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02188841
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published in Insights into Regional Development, 2019, 1 (3), pp.200-213. ⟨10.9770/ird.2019.1.3(2)⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02188841

DOI: 10.9770/ird.2019.1.3(2)

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