TY - JOUR
T1 - A techno-economic analysis of an optimal self-sufficient district
AU - Laitinen, Ari
AU - Lindholm, Oscar
AU - Hasan, Ala
AU - Reda, Francesco
AU - Hedman, Åsa
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper was funded by the Academy of Finland – Strategic Research Council (SRC) project “Smart Energy Transition (SET) – Realizing Its Potential for Sustainable Growth for Finland’s Second Century, Decision No. 314325” and VTT’s internal project “Intelligence in Structures”. This paper is related to the work done by the authors in the IEA-EBC Annex 83 Positive Energy Districts https://annex83.iea-ebc.org/ .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s)
PY - 2021/5/15
Y1 - 2021/5/15
N2 - Many cities and districts have announced that their ultimate goal is to be energy self-sufficient, but there are many technical and economic challenges that are required to be studied. The aim of this study is to find cost-optimal technical solutions for districts with high energy self-sufficiency rates that can cover their electricity demand. Two methods are applied, a rule-based method and an optimization method, to find the renewable energy system capacities for local centralized wind power, solar photovoltaic, battery, heat storage and heat pump in a district with a minimum life cycle cost. The Kalasatama district in Helsinki-Finland, is taken as a case study. The results show that the full energy self-sufficiency target requires very high investments in the renewable energy systems. For the studied case, reducing the self-sufficiency rate to 76% can bring down the life cycle cost by 66% and achieve a net-zero annual energy balance. It is economically and technically more feasible to aim achieving Positive Energy District or Net-Zero Energy District instead of full energy self-sufficiency. Based on the obtained results, the main investment should be made in wind power, due to its higher utilization rate around the year compared to solar photovoltaic. Investments in the expensive centralized battery storage sharply drops when the self-sufficiency rate is reduced from 100%. It is revealed that due to the high population density and limited availability of renewables, the physical boundary of a district may not fit the required renewable energy installations if high self-sufficiency is targeted. This will frequently lead to expanding the district boundary towards a virtual balancing boundary.
AB - Many cities and districts have announced that their ultimate goal is to be energy self-sufficient, but there are many technical and economic challenges that are required to be studied. The aim of this study is to find cost-optimal technical solutions for districts with high energy self-sufficiency rates that can cover their electricity demand. Two methods are applied, a rule-based method and an optimization method, to find the renewable energy system capacities for local centralized wind power, solar photovoltaic, battery, heat storage and heat pump in a district with a minimum life cycle cost. The Kalasatama district in Helsinki-Finland, is taken as a case study. The results show that the full energy self-sufficiency target requires very high investments in the renewable energy systems. For the studied case, reducing the self-sufficiency rate to 76% can bring down the life cycle cost by 66% and achieve a net-zero annual energy balance. It is economically and technically more feasible to aim achieving Positive Energy District or Net-Zero Energy District instead of full energy self-sufficiency. Based on the obtained results, the main investment should be made in wind power, due to its higher utilization rate around the year compared to solar photovoltaic. Investments in the expensive centralized battery storage sharply drops when the self-sufficiency rate is reduced from 100%. It is revealed that due to the high population density and limited availability of renewables, the physical boundary of a district may not fit the required renewable energy installations if high self-sufficiency is targeted. This will frequently lead to expanding the district boundary towards a virtual balancing boundary.
KW - Net-zero energy district
KW - Optimization
KW - Positive energy district
KW - Renewable energy
KW - Self-sufficient district
KW - Techno-economic analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85104137644&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114041
DO - 10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114041
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85104137644
VL - 236
JO - Energy Conversion and Management
JF - Energy Conversion and Management
SN - 0196-8904
M1 - 114041
ER -
