scholarly journals The Effect of Deep Energy Retrofit on The Hourly Power Demand of Finnish Detached Houses

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Hirvonen ◽  
Juha Jokisalo ◽  
Risto Kosonen

This study examines how the energy renovation of old detached houses affects the hourly power consumption of heating and electricity in Finland. As electrification of heating through heat pumps becomes more common, the effects on the grid need to be quantified. Increased fluctuation and peak power demand could increase the need for fossil-based peaking power plants or call for new investments to the distribution infrastructure. The novelty in this study is the focus on hourly power demand instead of just annual energy consumption. Identifying the influence of building energy retrofits on the instantaneous power demand can help guide policy and investments into building retrofits and related technology. The work was done through dynamic building simulation and utilized building configurations obtained through multi-objective optimization. Deep energy retrofits decreased both the total and peak heating power consumption. However, the use of air-source heat pumps increased the peak power demand of electricity in district heated and wood heated buildings by as much as 100%. On the other hand, peak power demand in buildings with direct electric heating was reduced by 30 to 40%. On the building stock level, the demand reduction in buildings with direct electric heating could compensate for the increase in the share of buildings with ground-source heat pumps, so that the national peak electricity demand would not increase. This prevents the increase of demand for high emission peaking power plants as heat pump penetration rises. However, a use is needed for the excess solar electricity generated by the optimally retrofitted buildings, because much of the solar electricity cannot be utilized in the single-family houses during summer.

2020 ◽  
Vol 172 ◽  
pp. 12008
Author(s):  
Henri Sarevet ◽  
Jevgeni Fadejev ◽  
Martin Thalfeldt ◽  
Jarek Kurnitski

Revised EPBD directive has set ambitious targets for nearly zero energy buildings. In residential buildings, energy performance can be improved mainly by applying better insulation of building fabric and by efficient energy sources, i.e. heat pumps. Electricity use and peak powers will increase when heat pumps, both air to water and ground source heat pumps, are used for heat source in new residential buildings compared to heating solutions that do not use electricity. The purpose of this study was to determine how much the high performance thermal insulation can compensate the increase of electricity use and peak power caused by extensive application of heat pumps in Finland residential buildings. The present study used five residential buildings that describe residential newbuild market. Finnish regulation defines minimum insulation level and high performance insulation level which were applied to single family houses, terraced house and apartment buildings to simulate electric power values all year round. Hourly electrical power values were simulated with dynamic simulation software IDA ICE. Results show that electricity use and peak powers are rising significantly when heat pumps are used, but better insulation level significantly decreases or even fully compensates the amount of additional electric power. The results can be used for the assesment of implications of extensive use of heat pumps to power grid.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1457-1464 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.R. Haines ◽  
J.E. Davison

Author(s):  
Md. Nasimul Islam Maruf

The energy transition requires integration of different energy carriers, including electricity, heat, and transport sectors. Energy modeling methods and tools are essential to provide a clear insight into the energy transition. However, the methodologies often overlook the details of small-scale energy systems. The study states an innovative approach to facilitate sub-national energy systems with 100% renewable penetration and sectoral integration. An optimization model, OSeEM-SN, is developed under the Oemof framework. The model is validated using the case study of Schleswig-Holstein. The study assumes three scenarios representing 25%, 50%, and 100% of the total available biomass potentials. OSeEM-SN reaches feasible solutions without additional offshore wind investment, indicating that they can be reserved for supplying other states’ energy demand. The annual investment cost varies between 1.02 bn – 1.44 bn €/yr for the three scenarios. The electricity generation decreases by 17%, indicating that with high biomass-based combined heat and power plants, the curtailment from other renewable plants can be decreased. Ground source heat pumps dominate the heat mix; however, their installation decreases by 28% as the biomass penetrates fully into the energy mix. The validation confirms OSeEM-SN as a beneficial tool to examine different scenarios for sub-national energy systems.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 6628
Author(s):  
Chiara Magni ◽  
Alessia Arteconi ◽  
Konstantinos Kavvadias ◽  
Sylvain Quoilin

The EU aims to become the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050. In order to meet this target, the integration of high shares of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) in the energy system is of primary importance. Nevertheless, the large deployment of variable renewable sources such as wind and photovoltaic power will pose important challenges in terms of power management. For this reason, increasing the system flexibility will be crucial to ensure the security of supply in future power systems. This work investigates the flexibility potential obtainable from the diffusion of Demand Response (DR) programmes applied to residential heating for different renewables penetration and power system configuration scenarios. To that end, a bottom-up model for residential heat demand and flexible electric heating systems (heat pumps and electric water heaters) is developed and directly integrated into Dispa-SET, an existing unit commitment optimal dispatch model of the power system. The integrated model is calibrated for the case of Belgium and different simulations are performed varying the penetration and type of residential heating technologies, installed renewables capacity and capacity mix. Results show that, at country level, operational cost could be reduced up to €35 million and curtailment up to 1 TWh per year with 1 million flexible electric heating systems installed. These benefits are significantly reduced when nuclear power plants (non-flexible) are replaced by gas-fired units (flexible) and grow when more renewable capacity is added. Moreover, when the number of flexible heating systems increases, a saturation effect of the flexibility is observed.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 4395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Hirvonen ◽  
Juha Jokisalo ◽  
Juhani Heljo ◽  
Risto Kosonen

To mitigate the effects of climate change, the European Union calls for major carbon emission reductions in the building sector through a deep renovation of the existing building stock. This study examines the cost-effective energy retrofit measures in Finnish detached houses. The Finnish detached house building stock was divided into four age classes according to the building code in effect at the time of their construction. Multi-objective optimization with a genetic algorithm was used to minimize the life cycle cost and CO2 emissions in each building type for five different main heating systems (district heating, wood/oil boiler, direct electric heating, and ground-source heat pump) by improving the building envelope and systems. Cost-effective emission reductions were possible with all heating systems, but especially with ground-source heat pumps. Replacing oil boilers with ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs), emissions could be reduced by 79% to 92% across all the studied detached houses and investment levels. With all the other heating systems, emission reductions of 20% to 75% were possible. The most cost-effective individual renovation measures were the installation of air-to-air heat pumps for auxiliary heating and improving the thermal insulation of external walls.


2019 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 03027
Author(s):  
Michele De Carli ◽  
Laura Carnieletto ◽  
Antonino Di Bella ◽  
Samantha Graci ◽  
Giuseppe Emmi ◽  
...  

Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP) are gaining interest for many applications and a very difficult task is to look at their affordability in urban environments with limited spaces. For this reason, the EU project GEO4CIVHIC has been funded. In order to set up different cases with different levels of retrofit and try to generalize results, the project focuses the activity on archetypes, i.e. buildings which may represent the usual type of building which may be found more frequently in urban environments around Europe. The analysis of the archetypes has been based on literature review and analysing the existing databases of buildings in Europe. The work allowed to determine a reference building for single family house and a building representing an apartment block for multi-users. In this latest case two types of possible uses have been examined: residential building and office building. In order to set up different levels of retrofit and cost-effective solutions, three different climates have been defined: warm climate, mild climate and cold climate. The climatic conditions do not only affect the energy demand of the building and the peak power needed for heating and cooling, but also determine different ways of buildings’ construction and define different levels of insulation. Last but not least, the buildings have been also subdivided into existing buildings, i.e. built up from 1960 to 2000 and historic buildings, i.e. buildings earlier than 1960. The paper presents the first step of the research which permitted to define the different archetypes, their dimensions and way they are constructed. Moreover, the different simulations allowed to define the energy needs of the buildings as well as the peak power for heating and cooling. This allows to create a matrix for the different levels of retrofit solutions which will be associated to related costs for a cost-benefit analysis to check the most achievable solutions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12516
Author(s):  
Antonio Novelli ◽  
Valentina D’Alonzo ◽  
Simon Pezzutto ◽  
Rubén Aarón Estrada Poggio ◽  
Alessandro Casasso ◽  
...  

Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) take advantage of the high thermal inertia of the ground to achieve a higher energy efficiency compared to Air Source Heat Pumps. GSHPs, therefore, have the potential to reduce heating, cooling, and domestic hot water costs, however the high installation cost of borehole heat exchangers (BHEs) limits the growth of such installations. Nevertheless, GSHPs can be profitable under certain conditions (climate, expensive fuels, subsidies, etc.), which can be identified using geo-referenced data and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The proposed work investigates the economic and financial ability of GSHPs to cover the heat demand of the residential building stock of the Italian region Valle d’Aosta. To identify the opportunities offered by GSHPs in the Valle d’Aosta region, more than 40,000 residential buildings were analyzed using a GIS-based method. The return on the investment was then assessed based on the occurrence of two conditions—the Italian subsidies of the “Conto Termico” and the installation of rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems—which contribute to the reduction of the initial and operation costs, respectively. The life-cycle costs of the four resulting combinations were compared with conventional systems composed of an oil/gas boiler and an air-source chiller. One of the main findings of this study is that subsidies exert a key role in the financial feasibility of GSHPs, especially for replacing gas boilers, whereas the presence of a PV system has a minor influence on the financial analysis carried out.


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