PlanEnergi has been part of the IEA DHC TS3-project Hybrid Energy Networks. The project is sponsored by the Danish Energy Agency’s Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme (EUDP). The resulting fact sheets highlight different topics within large-scale heat pumps in district heating.
The aim of the IEA DHC Annex TS3 „hybrid energy networks” is to promote opportunities and to overcome challenges for district heating and cooling (DHC) networks in an integrated energy system context, focusing on the coupling to the electricity and the gas grid.
The main input of renewable energy to the future power grid will be renewable electricity by wind and photovoltaics. Reaching higher shares of fluctuating renewables in the power grid may cause a variety of problems. One option to tackle these challenges, by simultaneously further increasing the share of renewable electricity in the overall energy system, is to distribute renewable electricity to other sectors, mainly the heating/cooling and the mobility sector.
By leveraging the potential of different energy storage technologies, it is possible to supply a sector with previously stored renewable electricity on demand. This approach can help to reduce the stress on the power grid at different levels (high, medium and low voltage). Possible energy storage technologies include thermal, chemical and electrical storages.
Some advantages of “Flexible Sector Coupling by Energy Storage Implementation” are:
- Energy storages are able to increase the share of renewable electricity in other sectors like heating/cooling and mobility sector.
- Energy storage can provide flexibility to all sectors (‘renewables on demand’).
The main goal of this task is to clarify the possibilities and the impact of energy storage implementation in the context of flexible sector coupling.
