Dr.-Ing. Philip Groesdonk, Managing Director of heatbrAIn GmbH
Many renewable heat sources have a supply profile that fluctuates over time in terms of potential or price. Consequently, load profiles are increasingly being used in planning for heat sinks as well. These profiles have a decisive influence on the sizing, security of supply and economic viability of generators, storage systems and networks. Today, thermal load curves are still frequently modelled using simplified standard load profiles (SLPs). As these profiles originate from the gas supply sector, they fail to adequately capture the interactions between building physics, occupancy patterns and generation systems, which carries the risk of systematic uncertainties or even incorrect sizing.
Individual simulation of building-specific load profiles, on the other hand, can take specific building physics and usage parameters into account. The presentation describes how simulable models of individual buildings can be created using a combination of public geospatial and local energy data, as well as AI support. Using a real-world project area as an example, the presentation demonstrates how load profiles vary due to structural changes in the building stock, the impact of using load profiles as dynamic, adjustable variables rather than static planning parameters on the design of the network and generation infrastructure, and how this, in turn, affects the economic viability of a cold local heating network.
The presentation is based on a paper presented at the 4th North German Heat Research Conference.
