Energy, Environmental, and Economic Analyses of a District Heating (DH) Network from Both Thermal Plant and End-Users’ Prospective: An Italian Case Study

District heating (DH) is an alternative technology to Individual Heating (IH) for satisfying end-user’s needs. This paper assesses the competitiveness of a DH network in the center of Italy from energy, environmental, and economic points of view considering both thermal power plant and end-users’ si...

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Autores principales: Erica Corradi, Mosè Rossi, Alice Mugnini, Anam Nadeem, Gabriele Comodi, Alessia Arteconi, Danilo Salvi
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: MDPI AG 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/011f3b00b10a4988be49110da15dcde3
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Sumario:District heating (DH) is an alternative technology to Individual Heating (IH) for satisfying end-user’s needs. This paper assesses the competitiveness of a DH network in the center of Italy from energy, environmental, and economic points of view considering both thermal power plant and end-users’ sides. On the thermal power plant side, the energy analysis considers the Primary Energy Saving (PES) and the specific energy (E<sub>sp</sub>) of the fuel actually exploited in the thermal power plant compared to its Low Heating Value (LHV), while the environmental analysis considers the avoided CO<sub>2</sub> and the economic analysis considers the Energy Efficiency Certificates (EECs). Results showed that the current thermal power plant configuration with two boilers and a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit reaches a yearly PES of 21.3% as well as 1099 tCO<sub>2</sub> avoided. From the economic analysis of the thermal power plant side, 829 EECs with an economic return of 207,222€ are obtained, while from the end-users’ side the DH network is cheaper than IH in 84.7% of the cases. Further technologies are also studied to enhance the CHP unit flexibility.