Integration of Renewable Energy in District Heating and Cooling networks Page 1

Abstract

In the recent years, climate change has been widely recognized as a significant issue that

threatens the global environment. Moreover, demands of space cooling, space heating and

domestic hot water are increasing daily, most of them being supplied by fossil fuels, which

not only contribute to emissions of greenhouse gases, but are increasingly getting scarce.

The use of renewable energy systems in district heating and cooling networks is an

excellent way to combat climate change and help the European Union meet its targets of

energy efficiency, use of renewable energy resources and decrease greenhouse gas

emissions.

This thesis, in the frame of the SmartReFlex project, focuses on Parc de l‟ Alba, a

Technology Park in the region of Catalonia in Spain. An existing polygeneration plant

serves the non-residential consumers of heating, cooling and electricity but there is a

forecast of substantial increase in the energy demand over the years.

EnergyPRO software was used to model the energy demand growth of the new consumers

till 2030.The software was then used to project the energy supply based on three 15-year

scenarios , from 2016 until 2030. Two of the scenarios incorporated several combinations

of renewable energy technologies while one was a “Business As Usual” scenario using

mainly fossil fuel based technologies.

The objective of the thesis was to evaluate the environmental, technical and economic

feasibility of the renewable energy systems based district heating and cooling network and

to decide which combination of renewable energies is best suited for this new network. It

was found that presently, biomass boilers combined with absorption chillers and supported

with solar thermal cooling, are the most competitive technologies in comparison to ground

source heat pumps.

Keywords: district heating and cooling, renewable energy systems, energy efficiency,

building energy demand, biogas, biomass, geothermal, solar thernal cooling, EnergyPRO