Designing a mobility strategy for energy

What’s the first thing you do when
developing a mobility plan for a city? You look at a map. Lots of maps,
ideally. You look at the departure points, destination points, flows,
bottlenecks, projections for the future and try to come up with a way to smooth
everything out as much as possible, as quickly as possible and for as little
investment as possible.

The same is true for energy – in this case –
heating and cooling.

When we talk about ‘How to design smart
sector integration’ what we are really trying to do is come up with a mobility plan
for energy.

Where do we have excess energy? Whether
from data
centres, industry or supermarkets?
Next, where do we need heat? In homes, businesses, schools, transport, etc. And
what other local potential sources of energy and energy storage exist that
could be efficiently used like abandoned
mines or deep
geothermal?

So we start with maps. In terms of a ‘no
regret’ option in designing smart sector integration mapping out a city’s heat
needs there is no better, cheaper, or more valuable option than mapping your
heating and cooling.

Hot Maps has been in
testing the last couple of years in seven pilot cities. It’s an open-source,
user driven, planning software that can be used in all EU countries.

But mapping is the start. It’s what allows to
build your metro that will keep your city moving. District Heating and Cooling
networks are the metros of the energy world.

It’s difficult to overstate how much a
District Heating and Cooling network brings to the table:

They are low carbon

They provide energy storage and balancing
services

They are an integration platform

They maximise the potential for renewable
energy (both thermal and electricity), energy efficiency, use and recovery of
waste heat and other waste resources – thereby contributing to the circular
economy – and cost-effectiveness. It would also address the flexibility and
balance issues of the current energy system, and help deliver a just transition
that involves local communities and leaves no one behind.

In the same way that a metro is the backbone
that makes the rest of a public transport system work, DHC brings benefits to
every element of the energy system. It completely changes the traditional
relationships between electricity, heat and gas networks on the supply side,
and their links with key sectors on the demand side (e.g. buildings, industry,
transport).

In Denmark this approach to energy system
integration has been a success. Thanks to local DHC networks, they matched the electricity
surpluses from wind with the country’s heating and cooling needs. These
networks have also effectively linked up with electricity systems, by cogenerating
clean electricity and heat, and through power-to-heat production in large-scale
heat pumps.

Cities can also respond to price fluctuations
in the electricity market as DHC suppliers and help balance the grid by
producing or consuming more electricity. They can also use thermal energy
storage, which is generally less expensive than electricity storage, to provide
further flexibility in an integrated energy system. Considering that energy
consumption patterns for electricity and heat are also different, having
cities’ DHC networks work in concert with electricity and gas grids, allows for
a better optimization than a full electrification approach.

Finally, cities have shown that implementing
energy system integration with local resources can breathe new life into coal
regions’ just transition paths. The Mijnwater
project in the Energy Cities member city of Heerlen, located in a former coal-mining
region in the Netherlands, is a success story in this regard. After the closure
of its coalmines between 1965 and 1974, the old mining tunnels filled with
groundwater, which was heated by the earth naturally. The mines became a water
reservoir, unused for many years, until the city stepped in, with support from
the EU and the governmental agency Agentschap NL, to drill five wells and build
an underground water piping system.

The system combines a low-temperature DHC grid,
with seasonal geothermal heat storage, and the use of reversible heat pumps
providing cooling and heating to buildings. The heat pumps are highly efficient
and use green electricity procured from the wholesale market (but they plan to
produce it locally in the future). Storage is guaranteed by water tanks along
the DHC networks. Heerlen’s project also involves some consumers as producers,
as the network recovers heat from some connected buildings, such as industries,
datacenters and supermarkets. Heerlen’s Mijnwater project could be replicated
in other European coal regions, by using thermal pits or geothermal drillings
as seasonal storage options.

DHC of course isn’t the answer to everything. But
it’s flexibility and efficiency are key to developing local, clean, efficient
energy resources and effective sector integration.

The post Designing a mobility strategy for energy appeared first on Energy Cities.

Fuente: ENERGY CITIES
Enlace a la noticia: Designing a mobility strategy for energy