Hennigsdorf district heating network becomes real-life laboratory

Municipal public utility company is expanding climate-neutral heat supply

Flexible heat networks provide a key component in making greater use of existing waste heat from industrial production and renewable heat in order to meet local needs. By 2020, the municipal public utility company in the Brandenburg town of Hennigsdorf is planning to rebuild its network and expand the share of climate-neutral heat generated in the district heating to 80%. The concept is presented in the new BINE-Projektinfo brochure entitled "District heating network becomes heat hub" (02/2018). Key components include a multifunctional, large-capacity storage system, the integration of waste heat from a local steelworks as well as centralised and decentralised solar collector arrays. The research project is therefore serving as a real-life laboratory to ensure the renewable future of the heat supply.

50% of the heat generated in Hennigsdorf's district heating system is already climate-neutral. This has been ensured since 2010 by, amongst other things, a biomass cogeneration plant, a biogas CHP plant and the hydraulic combination of the original four sub-networks to form a complete system. That is sufficient to cover the base and medium loads using renewable sources all year round. The centrepiece of the planned network expansion is a multifunctional, large-capacity heat storage system that combines the capabilities of daily, monthly and long-term storage. This enables the heat supply and demand to be decoupled and priority given to the feed-in from decentralised, small-scale systems. In future, the district heating network itself will also serve as a storage facility to absorb short-term peak loads and to take over the load management of heat storage systems integrated into the network.

The expansion of the district heating in Hennigsdorf will be accompanied by a comprehensive measurement and evaluation programme. The municipal public utility, Stadtwerke Hennigsdorf, is cooperating with Ruppin Consult GmbH and other partners in this research project.

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