Modern district heating and cooling is an excellent enabler for integrating renewables, waste heat, heat pumps, storage, and digitalisation into the energy system to deliver deep decarbonisation, affordable comfort, energy security, and jobs. It relies on the combination with other energy technologies, and in the future, heat pumps will be one of the most important ones.
The IEA TCP Coordination Group on Thermal Networks, consisting of 11 different TCPs (Technology Collaboration Programmes) have prepared a flagship report “Thermal networks: Empowering the smart transition to net-zero” and a collection of impact fact sheets and success stories, which show the benefits of thermal networks to the technologies covered by the other TCPs. HPT TCP has actively contributed to this work by providing input, case studies, and success stories from the work performed with the HPT TCP Projects.
The report targets decision makers in government, utilities, industry, and finance, offering clear messages on policies, planning tools, and investments for a just and secure heat transition, and has been published by the DHC TCP (District Heating and Cooling).
The report conveys that heat pumps are a flexible and highly efficient technology that synergizes exceptionally well with thermal networks. On the one hand, small, building-scale heat pumps can efficiently supply low-carbon heat to areas that are not economically feasible for thermal networks, such as many villages and single-family house areas, and to buildings with combined heating and cooling needs or where no large-scale heat source for a thermal network is available. On the other hand, large heat pumps connected to thermal networks can supply dense urban areas by extracting renewable heat from air, water, or waste sources and amplifying it for distribution.
Thus, large heat pumps enable thermal networks to deliver electricity-based, efficient, and low-carbon heating and cooling at scale, while supporting the integration of diverse renewable and waste heat streams. Heat pumps distributed across different buildings can also extract heat from thermal source networks and supply the heat to the buildings.
“This solution can reduce system emissions and operational costs and maximize flexibility by matching supply and demand efficiently” (quote from the report).
One of the success stories highlighted in the publication (linked below) is smokefree district heating using a diversified supply with air/water heat pumps, electrical boiler, and thermal storage, supplementing biomass boiler in Felding, Denmark, where two fast acting air-to-water CO2 heat pumps with a total capacity of 3.5 MW were installed, significantly enhancing district heating efficiency and providing flexibility to the electric grid.
Link to report: Thermal_Networks_The_Smart_Way_to_Net_Zero.pdf
Link to Impact Fact Sheets and Success Stories: Thermal_Networks_Selected_Case_Studies.pdf