Cost-efficiency of urban heating strategies – Modelling scale effects of low-energy building heat supply

There is now a strong demand in Sweden for construction of new low energy buildings (LEB) areas. There are essentially three options for heat supply to these LEB areas: “individual”, “on-site” and “large heat network” supply. The chosen option is of strategic societal interest. Thus, this study aims at comparing the long-term system cost of the three heat supply options. A dynamic modelling approach is applied in a systematic analysis designed to investigate the threshold for the various options' cost-efficiency. The study addresses scale impacts of hypothetical LEB areas and district heating systems. The results show that, generally, the large heat network option has the lowest system cost whereas in most cases the individual option has the highest system cost. Keywords: Low temperature district heating, Fourth generation district heating, TIMES, Energy system modelling, Passive houses