Analysis of the energy and economic impact of cost-optimal buildings refurbishment on district heating systems

Abstract

ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 2 possibility to shift to a low-temperature DH is considered as a feasible solution to compensate for the loss of performance of the network in combination with a systematic approach to the refurbishment of the connected buildings. For this purpose, an integrated model for both buildings and network has been developed. Several refurbishment measures for the existing buildings have been investigated and a multiobjective (energy and economic) optimization has been conducted, by means of a genetic algorithm to reduce the computational time. The results highlight that the building refurbishment strongly influence both the energy and economic performance of the DH system. The distribution efficiency is considerably low during summer − only domestic hot water (DHW) need − and when a high number of refurbished buildings is considered in the DH network. Nevertheless, the implementation of the minimum network temperature allows a partial compensation for both the energy and the economic losses deriving from the refurbishment. Although an incentive to promote the use of heat at lower temperature has been considered, the economic loss deriving from the incentive could not be paid back.

Cost-Optimal Analysis for Nearly Zero Energy Buildings Design and Optimization: A Critical Review

“…In some cases, district heating [68,69] and micro CHP [87] appears in the possible EEMs for cost-effectively heating multi-family buildings.…”

“…Differently from single-family houses, cost-optimal studies in multi-family residential buildings lead to select the gas condensing boiler for heating in almost all climate zones [15,42,46,57,85,89,106]. In some cases, district heating [68,69] and micro CHP [87] appears in the possible EEMs for costeffectively heating multi-family buildings.…”

Fifth-Generation District Heating and Cooling Substations: Demand Response with Artificial Neural Network-Based Model Predictive Control

“…In Europe, the district heating market share stands at about 12-13% [4,5], whereas, for district cooling, the same value is about 2% [6]. Without any measures being implemented, the current district heating and cooling (DHC) business will be affected by the variation of buildings' thermal energy demands in the coming decades due to various energy efficiency programs [7].…”

An exergy-rational district energy model for 100% renewable cities with distance limitations

“…But the few available works of literature on this topic depend on the First Law and economy only. For example, Prando et al [20] have developed a numerical model for the thermal behavior of a district heating network and calculated its performance in terms of costoptimal building refurbishment, focusing on 13 micro-networks located in South Tyrol, Italy, and investigated the optimum building refurbishment for constant heat price and provided data about a relationship between the thermal load decrease and the distribution cost for fixed piping design. Although it covers a limited number of buildings, it shows the dependence of the piping length and thermal loads as a function of the number of buildings that may have a closely-linear relationship, which is shown in Fig.…”

“…Ljubenko and others referred to exergy by noting that lowering the exergy more renewable and lowquality waste heat sources may be exploited [23]. [20] with an added Linear Fit. They developed an exergy-based distribution-network analysis model and introduced new criteria for performance.…”