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NÆSTVED VARMEVÆRK
MEMB E R COMP ANY P RO F I L E
around the city, 2,000 of them are attached to this rental deal. As a beneficial consequence, customers have their heat rooms renovated and the cooling in their homes gets better, which reduces the heat loss. Næstved District Heating has for many years optimized its system and has always used state-of-the-art technology, but more was needed: "We have simply not been able to adjust more parameters from our side, so if we were to get better and have less losses in the network, it would be the customers' individual heating systems, we had to do something about", explains Jens Andersen. An incentive tariff was therefore introduced two years ago, a solution that led to a gradual improvement of the entire plant. Now that cooling is being done the right way, customers do not have to pay extra for it, as long as they themselves make adjustments in their heating systems. The latest from Næstved District Heating is that it is now going all in by financing the entire process, with the renting deal being carried out after the installation. As Jens Andersen explains: "Just as we felt with the rental deal, we also believe that the financial agreement will be a success. We have just introduced it in a new district heating area, and currently 50 properties have signed up - 45 of them have chosen the large model, where we take care of the financing. The philosophy behind it is that you do not need to take money out of the pocket to switch to district heating”. This also means that the connection fee, which a customer would normally have to pay, is free the first year after enrolling. The plant has received pre-enrollment in a new area, with around 65-70% of customers making a deal the first time. "It is voluntary to enroll oneself to the district heating network in Næstved, so it is a fairly large hit rate we have there. We will probably kick-start the project in August, and we have seen before that when the excavators are out there, we begin to attract more customers”, says Jens Andersen.
Næstved District Heating, heat supplier for half of the city of Næstved, had its 50th anniversary last year. It mainly uses waste as energy source, which accounts for about 80% of their total production; the remaining 20% is delivered by natural gas boilers. The majority of the plant's total consumption, 75%, is supplied by AffaldPlus, who also use some gas in their production. The remaining 5% is produced by the heating plant itself. This means that Næstved District Heating has a large security of supply: if, for example, the waste incineration plant falls out and fail to deliver, the reserve load boilers can act as substitutes and supply the entire city. The plant has a varied customer base: it has approximately 5,000 customers/meters, from single-family houses to large buildings with up to 1,100 tenants. Næstved District Heating employs 15 people, divided between the administration and operations department. Jens Andersen, CEO of Næstved District Heating, tells us: "We are focusing on how to expand our district heating area and are right now working on major projects: we are expanding in a new area, and expect to have around 100 properties by next year that we need to have supplied with district heating. We follow, like many other places, the government's policy in this area, and that is that fossil fuels must be wiped out from the heat supply. Therefore we are supplying the city with even more heating and working on finding out which form of production plant we must established. It is in this phase we are right now: how the plant should look like". What Næstved District Heating is currently aiming at is to make it attractive for new customers to join its network, by e.g. introducing a “rental arrangement” of the district heating network: "When new customers join, they do not have to invest in an exchange unit. They can rent it from us, with maintenance included, "says Jens Andersen. This is something that has been introduced for 3.5 years ago and there is great demand for it: out of the 5,000 installations
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