AVPLAN - Designing new district heating systems

Imagine a large urban area across which district heating has been distributed through a complex grid of pipelines for many years. Typically the district heating comes from conventional fossil-fuel fired power stations.

Now an updated and more sustainable generation of district heating is necessary. This is not an easy task.

Added Values helps provide an overview enabling the customer (e.g. a utility company) to decide which new energy plants to invest in – where and when.

This is what we do

• In our software AVPLAN we "draw" the customer's present system: types of energy sources, transmission and distribution network, required temperatures, future heat demand, etc.
• We insert all needed data such as plant specification, transmission and distribution bottlenecks, efficiencies, fuel prices, weather data, and much more.
• Together with the customer, we now identify the most promising future heat production technologies and these are added into AVPLAN.
• Now AVPLAN flexes its muscles: It crunches the data to caluculate and optimize the wanted criteria; such as heat prices, CO₂ emission targets, fuel diversity, robustness towards future fuel prices and other uncertainties.

Having calculated all data, AVPLAN illustrates how a new and greener district heating system might be composed in terms of energy sources, size, location, storage and more.

It is a complex and long process, and we work meticulously to get valid, useful results, but it enables us - together with the customer - to identify the best energy technologies to invest in.

AVPLAN facilitates the decision-making
Based on the AVPLAN calculations, the customers are able to decide which energy solutions to invest in – where and when.

Our AVPLAN software is based on the modelling language GAMS, and we have continuously developed the softtware for almost 10 years. And we keep on developing it.

A CUSTOMER CASE IN SOUTHERN JUTLAND

The below AVPLAN outputs were the outcome of a project carried out by Added Values and SEP Sønderjylland. The purpose was to identify potential advantages of a joint transmission network between the largest cities in southern Jutland.

The outputs illustrate two scenarios: