Guidelines for using the Hotmaps toolbox for analyses at national level

Table of Contents

Introduction

These guidelines describe how the Hotmaps toolbox can be used to analyse costs and potentials for efficient and renewable heating and cooling at national level. The guide is especially oriented towards the development of results according to the comprehensive assessment of national heating and cooling potentials referred to in Article 14(1) of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) in its current version.

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Part I: Overview of heating and cooling

The Hotmaps database and toolbox provides two different inputs to this part: first, the Hotmaps database provides default data for several of the data needed to include in this part I of the comprehensive assessment. Second, the Hotmaps toolbox is basically a mapping tool that allows a geographical representation of default data in the toolbox but also of other data uploaded to the toolbox. In the following we describe the different default data form Hotmaps that might be of use and we link to the descriptions of how to use the upload function of the Hotmaps toolbox.

The following data relevant for Part I of Annex VIII is available in the Hotmaps database:

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Part III: Analysis of the economic potential for efficiency in heating and cooling

The Hotmaps toolbox contains a number of calculation modules (CMs) that can be used to analyse the economic potential for efficiency in heating and cooling. In the following, a possible approach for generating results for the comprehensive assessment with the Hotmaps toolbox is described also linking to the respective default data and calculation modules.

Overview of the Hotmaps approach

To assess the economic potential for efficiency in heating and cooling it is important to distinguish between areas potentially supplied by district heating and areas where decentral supply will most probably be more economically efficient. Thus, the Hotmaps approach strongly builds on the following four steps:

  1. Identify different representative, typical cases for district heating in the country/region under investigation

  2. Carry out analyses of district heating grid construction/expansion and district heat supply for the identified representative cases

  3. Calculate indicators of decentral heat supply

  4. Compare different scenarios of district heating and decentral heat supply and sensitivity calculations

The following figure shows this approach graphically. The different steps will be explained in more detail in the following chapters of these guidelines.

Figure: Hotmaps approach for analysing the economic potential for efficiency in heating and cooling in course of Article 14 of the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED)

In all of these steps various scenarios and sensitivities should be taken into account:

  • Different levels of heat savings (implemented in step 1, 2 and 3)
  • Different levels of district heating shares in total heat supply (implemented in step 2)
  • Different future energy prices (implemented in step 2 and 3)
  • Different depreciation times and discount rates (socio-economic vs. private-economic calculations) (implemented in step 2 and 3)

The following resulting indicators can be retrieved from the Hotmaps Calculation Modules (CMs):

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Different Steps

  • Step 1: Identification of different representative cases for district heating
    • Calculation of future heat demand and building floor area density maps
    • Identification of areas potentially interesting for district heating
    • Analysis of potentials for excess heat and renewable energy in the identified areas with potential interest for district heating
    • Identification of representative, typical district heating areas for further analysis
  • Step 2: Costs and potentials for district heating in representative regions or cities
    • Economic assessment of the potential for district heating
    • Estimation of costs for the transport of excess heat to district heating areas
    • Development of future heat load profiles
    • Calculation of costs and emissions of heat supply in district heating
  • [Step 3: Calculation of decentral heat supply]

Step 3: Calculation of decentral heat supply

In the third step, the costs and emissions of heat supply via decentral technologies are calculated. This calculation should be performed for different representative buildings in the country/region of interest. While for district heating representative cities/areas have been developed in step 1 of the approach, typical buildings in each EU Member State data can be found in the Hotmaps default database. Also, for many EU countries detailed building typologies (building archetypes) with data on heat demand before and after renovation can be found in statistics and literature.

The CM - Decentral heating supply can be used to calculate the costs and emissions of heat supply via different decentral technologies. The module uses data on heat demand as well as data on costs of technologies and prices for energy carriers to calculate the levelised costs of heat supply [EUR/MWh] for the different technologies in the different typical buildings and renovation states. The following figure shows this procedure graphically and shows the various data sources feeding into the CM - Decentral heating supply.

Figure: Calculation of decentral heat supply (Step 3)

The calculations can be used to identify costs and benefits of various supply technologies in different representative buildings and their sensitivity to important influencing parameters like energy carrier and CO2 prices or interest rate and depreciation time.

The outcomes of this step are the costs of heat supply via decentral technologies [EUR/MWh] in each of the representative buildings and the related CO2 emissions [kt/yr]. These results will then be used in the overall scenario comparison in step 4.

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Step 4: Comparison of results for different scenarios

The final step in the analysis is the comparison of the results for the different scenarios and sensitivities. For this, all results calculated in the previous steps are collected both from the calculations of district heating as well as from the calculations of decentral supply and compared against each other for main indicators. This can be done in the CM - Scenario Assessment. The following figure shows this approach.

Figure: Comparison of results for different scenarios (Step 4)

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References

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How to cite

Marcus Hummel, in Hotmaps-Wiki, Guidelines for using the Hotmaps toolbox for analyses at national level (October 2020)

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Authors and reviewers

This page is written by Marcus Hummel*.

  • [x] This page was reviewed by Lukas Kranzl**.

* e-think, Zentrum f. Energiewirtschaft und Umwelt, Argentinierstrasse 18/10, 1040 Wien

** Energy Economics Group - TU Wien, Institute of Energy Systems and Electrical Drives, Gusshausstrasse 27-29/370, 1040 Wien

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License

Copyright © 2016-2019: Marcus Hummel

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 International License.

SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0

License-Text: https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html

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Acknowledgement

We would like to convey our deepest appreciation to the Horizon 2020 Hotmaps Project (Grant Agreement number 723677), which provided the funding to carry out the present investigation.

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German*

* machine translated