This article is based on the research presented in the Ph.D. thesis’ A Comprehensive Framework and Associated Methodology for the Design, Operative Planning, and Operation of District Heating Systems to Facilitate the Transition Towards a Fully Renewable Heat Supply’. Figures are reused from the thesis and the defense presentation.
I. Preconditions (social demands, resources, environmental conditions) II. Policies
(supernational, national, regional legislation, regulation)
III. Heat strategy (long-term visions/plans, initiating, financing) IV. Organization
(institutions, business models, ownership, pricing)
V. Design (constructions, investments, contracts, enhancements) VI. Operative planning
(optimization, schedules, interaction with other markets)
VII. Operation (controlling, monitoring, fault detection & treatment) VIII. Evaluation
(data processing, energy balances, billing)
Figure 2. Activities in DHS clustered into eight DH scopes. The figure depicts the developed DH scopes. Each of the eight scopes represents a field of activities that accompany a DHS through its lifetime. The scopes are related to each other. In the implementation process, the higher-level scopes define the conditions for the other scopes. In the bottom-up direction, there is no direct impact. Instead, learning cycles should be implemented to adjust the requirements in a transition-facilitating way.
Competition enables a green and social transition. One of the most relevant decisions in the scope of the organization is the question if competition should be allowed inside the DHS. It is important to integrate renewable technologies while optimizing the long- term total costs of the system to fulfill the objective of a low-cost and socially green transition. To do so, DHSs must be developed as economically efficient as possible.
For example, established (monopolistic) companies can rest on the lock-in effect of high temperatures, which reduces the pressure to change to new tech- nologies 1 . Further, since some of the latest technol- ogies are very complex and require a great deal of expertise (e.g., deep geothermal plants), their market introduction has high costs when the individual ex- pertise of each DH company is low.
Under these conditions, it seems rational to introduce competition to DHSs from a macroeconomic per-
1 This discussion is slightly different for regulated environments such as in Denmark compared to competitive environments with monopolistic structures such as in Germany. However, allowing third party access would be beneficial in both environments.
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