Effects on dimensioning of heat supply technologies for district heating under consideration of future developments regarding investment costs and emission factors
Denis Divkovic, Lukas Knorr, Ramon Schwesig, Henning Meschede
Abstract
Municipalities and energy suppliers are facing the challenge of transforming space heating supply from fossil fuels to energy sources with low greenhouse gas emissions as part of the heating sector transition. Redesigning and planning future heat generation portfolios for district heating networks involves uncertainties such as energy prices, investment costs, district heat sales, and building energy efficiency. This study presents an optimisation model based on multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming to address economic and ecological needs. The model considers economic and emission objectives to find optimal solutions for heat generation unit dimensioning under different growth scenarios and different emission factors for district heat demands. The results show different pareto optimal solutions, providing a range for heat generation unit dimensioning and heat generation over the investigated time horizon. Additionally, the results include commissioning timepoints which are compared within different heat demand growth scenarios.