Heat demand peak shaving in urban integrated energy systems by demand side management - A techno-economic and environmental approach

Abstract The integration of variable renewable resources and decentralized energy technologies generates the need for a larger flexibility of the energy demand. In order to fully deploy a demand side management approach, synergies between interconnected energy systems have to be systematically implemented. By taking this standpoint, this study proposes a new approach to explore the potential of multi-energy integrated energy systems. This approach is constituted by two main steps, which are (1) the performance simulation of selected energy infrastructures and (2) the estimation of related techno-economic performance indicators. Step (1) expands the work presented in previous literature, by including a novel co-simulation feature. In step (2), the levelized cost of energy and location-dependent emission factors are used as key performance indicators. In this paper, the presented approach is demonstrated by implementing two demand side management options for heat peak demand shaving. A Swedish residential neighborhood is considered as a case study. The first option explores the potential of storing heat in the thermal mass of residential buildings. The proposed strategies lead to a decrease of up to 70% of primary energy consumption, depending on the indoor comfort requirements. The second option estimates the techno-economic feasibility of a new set of scenarios based on the integration of geothermal distributed heat pumps within a district heating network. The district heating scenario is found to be the most techno-economical convenient. Nevertheless, a moderate penetration of distributed heat pumps (around 20%) is shown to have a good trade-off with the reduction of CO2 emissions.