Using residential buildings to manage flexibility in the district heating network: perspectives and future visions from sector professionals

Abstract

Intermittent energy resources challenge the ways in which the existing energy system operates. Studies suggest that residential buildings can provide a flexibility service for district heating (DH) systems. This technique involves load shifting by heating buildings to higher temperatures at times when energy is more readily available, thus diminishing heating needs at times of peak demand or when energy is scarce. Based on three Future Workshops (FWs) where DH professionals and other relevant DH stakeholders participated and discussed this topic, this paper reports on the extent to which these actors see energy flexibility as a realistic future development, and on what they see as key potentials and challenges in that regard. Preliminary results indicate that the mix of the actors and the specific local context greatly influence how this topic is understood, emphasizing the importance of including local context in investigations of energy flexibility. FW participants included representatives from DH companies, municipalities, building associations, technology developers, etc. The FWs were conducted at three different localities of Denmark: Copenhagen, Aalborg and Sønderborg, i.e. the national capital, a regional capital and a smaller city, respectively.

Evaluation of Various Algorithms' Performance in Supervised Binary Classification for Occupant Detection Using a Dataset from a Residential Building

“…This technical report describes the evaluation process of various machine learning algorithms' performance used for supervised binary classification for occupant detection, using a dataset from a residential building in the North of Denmark. It supports the publication of Development and Application of an XGBoost-Based Occupant Detection Model for Residential Buildings Using Supervised Learning (sent to review in Building & Environment September 2023) [1].…”

Classification of Measures for Dealing with District Heating Load Variations—A Systematic Review

“…Using heat stored in the buildings connected to DH networks to reduce the DH demand peaks (i.e., using the buildings for so-called 'virtual' storage) is one of the strategies that has attracted increasing attention during the last years, especially in Italy [25,[69][70][71][72][73][74] and in Nordic countries, such as Finland [30,[75][76][77], Denmark [78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85], and Sweden [54,86,87]. These countries are characterized by well-developed DH sectors and a large proportion of buildings with high thermal inertia.…”

“…Furthermore, although the primary energy use can be reduced [54], this is not always the case. In some cases, an even higher energy use may occur [76,82,83], e.g., if the control is price-based, the increased energy use will probably occur when the DH price is low [81,82].…”

“…Unfortunately, using residential buildings to manage the DHS's flexibility is usually not compatible with the households' DH consumption patterns [83]. For this reason, to be able to make the customers' DH consumption more flexible, the demand side measures must be based on understanding the customers' everyday practices [97], and it must include incentives for the customers that acknowledges their willingness to enact energyand cost-savings [76].…”

When Space Heating Becomes Digitalized: Investigating Competencies for Controlling Smart Home Technology in the Energy-Efficient Home

“…Flexibility in short-term demand may imply both that peaks in demand are reduced or levelled out and that demand is moved to times when there is high renewable production from fluctuating sources, such as wind power. Several experiments and research studies have been done related to shifting demand within the electric grid [2,3], whereas flexibility in district heating is less developed and researched [4], especially when utilizing an interdisciplinary approach. Technical energy modelling of buildings, however, shows that especially well insulated buildings with high thermal mass can be used to deliver flexibility to district heating systems [5,6].…”