New handbook on upgrading district heating grids in Europe published

District Heating (DH) systems present a high potential for the transition of the heat sector, both technically and organizationally. They allow the integration of renewable energies, they serve to improve the overall energy efficiency and they facilitate sector coupling (coupling between heating, electricity and mobility). However, many DH systems need to be continuously upgraded so that they are efficient and have zero (or close to zero) emissions and thus, contribute to mitigate climate change.

DH systems are very individual with their own characteristics and upgrading processes can be very complex, time-consuming, and implying high investments. Hence, more than one year was needed to put all the knowledge of the Upgrade DH consortium partners on paper and to elaborate a handbook with the title “Upgrading the performance of district heating networks – Technical and non-technical approaches; A Handbook”. Experiences from different European countries were used to describe the technical and non-technical approaches in DH upgrading processes. The handbook is available in English and 6 other languages: Bosnian, Croatian, Danish, Italian, Lithuanian, and Polish. In several countries, there is a lack of such information in national language and thus, the handbook presents a great opportunity to easily get into the topic of upgrading DH systems. The aim is to inform stakeholders such as decision makers, politicians, utilities, operators, end consumers, or potential developers of DH systems, about upgrading opportunities. Thereby, the ambition of the handbook is not to provide a detailed technical guideline for technicians, but rather to give an overview on upgrading options. The handbook is available for free as pdf document at www.upgrade-dh.eu

About:
The overall objective of the Upgrade DH project is to improve the performance of district heating (DH) networks in Europe by supporting selected demonstration cases for upgrading, which can be replicated in Europe. The Upgrade DH project supports the upgrading and retrofitting process of DH systems in different climate regions of Europe, covering various countries: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and The Netherlands. In each of the target countries, the upgrading process will be initiated at concrete DH systems of the so-called Upgrade DH demonstration cases (demo cases). The gained knowledge and experiences will be further replicated to other European countries and DH systems (replication cases) in order to leverage the impact.Core activities of the Upgrade DH project include the collection of the best upgrading measures and tools, the support of the upgrading process for selected DH networks, the organisation of capacity building measures about DH upgrading, financing and business models, as well as the development of national and regional action plans. In addition, an image raising campaign for modern DH networks will be carried out in the Upgrade DH project. The outcome will be the initiation of DH upgrading process in the above-mentioned target countries and beyond.

Disclaimer:
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 785014. The sole responsibility for the content of this report lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union nor of the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME). Neither the EASME nor the European Commission are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.