This second newsletter of RELaTED provides an insight to the progress of our concept for the de-carbonisation of District Heating (DH) networks. We hope that it will be useful for any DH operator, technology supplier, engineers, and any other stakeholder in the DH industry.
Roberto Garay, RELaTED Project Coordinator
With the first year of the project already gone, we have found that DH systems deployed across EU are already digitalized to a large extent, with ongoing plans for full digitalization pretty soon. For instance, most of our demonstration networks in TARTU and BELGRADE were already in remote-reading schemes, and/or controlled through predictive algorithms.
RELaTED project will help most of our demonstration networks to be pioneers in low temperature, de-carbonised, and smart DH networks.
At the same time, with TARTU already relying mostly on biomass, and large investments foreseen in BELGRADE to substitute natural gas burners by large solar heat plants, waste incineration and power plant conversion to CHP schemes, Utilities are already halfway in the process of de-carbonisation.
No matter if utilities have engaged in these topics for a variety of reasons (avoid local reading costs, reduce fuel costs, security of supply, etc), these DHs are in the good track. They only need some help to be pioneers in low temperature, de-carbonised, and smart DH networks. And RELaTED is here for that. Partners engaged in the project will provide detailed long term cost assessments, engineering models and innovative industrial products for it.