Investigation on Individual and Collective PV Self-Consumption for a Fifth Generation District Heating Network

• Published in: Energies (Basel) Vol. 15; no. 3; p. 1022
• Main Authors: Vivian, Jacopo, Chinello, Mattia, Zarrella, Angelo, De Carli, Michele
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2022
• Subjects: Alternative energy sources; Batteries; Biomass energy; Buildings; Carbon dioxide; Case studies; collective self-consumption; Community; Cooling; Distributed generation; District heating; district heating and cooling; Efficiency; Electric power generation; Electrical loads; Electricity; Emissions; Energy; Energy sources; Heat; Heat exchangers; Heat pumps; Legislation; Load; Low temperature; Mathematical models; Operating costs; Photovoltaics; Power plants; Public buildings; Renewable Energy Community; Renewable energy sources; Renewable resources; Rural areas; Seasonal variations; Statistical analysis; Statistical models; Urban environments; Ventilation; Italy
• ISSN: 1996-1073; 1996-1073
• DOI: 10.3390/en15031022

Renewable Energy Communities have been recently introduced in European legislation to promote distributed generation from renewable energy sources. In fact, they allow to produce and consume energy from shared local power plants. Low temperature district heating and cooling networks with distributed heat pumps have demonstrated their capability to exploit renewable and waste heat sources in the urban environment. Therefore, they are considered a promising infrastructure to help decarbonize the building sector. As their main operating cost is the electricity purchased by the utility for heat pumps and circulation pumps, this work investigates whether a Renewable Energy Community could help mitigate such cost by sharing electricity produced by local photovoltaic (PV) systems. The research relies on computer simulations performed with both physical and statistical models for the evaluation of electrical load profiles at the district level. Results show that due to the different seasonality between heating demand and PV production, the increase in self-consumption due to the distributed heat pumps is lower than 10%. The use of batteries does not seem convenient for the same reason. The environmental benefit of the proposed system is evident, with CO2 emissions reduced by 72–80% compared to the current situation depending on PV power installed. It also emerged that PV sharing significantly improves the self-consumption at the district level, in particular when the installed PV power is limited (+45%). In conclusion, results suggest that current incentives on PV-sharing make Renewable Energy Communities a viable option to improve the techno-economic performance of fifth-generation district heating and cooling networks.