THE SWEDISH DEMONSTRATOR - MALMÖ

E.ON in Sweden, as a DSO and heat network operator, is focused on renewables, energy networks and customer solutions, following its conviction that these foundations are the building blocks of the new energy world. The Swedish Energy market and market players, especially the DSOs are currently facing challenges, e.g. congestion management, curtailment, peak shaving, with only some local and limited services available today. At the same time, there is an increasing need for flexibility services and for the introduction of a new market for energy communities. The Swedish InterFlex team set out to achieve the following objectives:

To demonstrate as an electricity and heat network operator the optimal use of a local energy system flexibility arising from local heat production (incl. power2heat) alternatives and consumption (Use Cases 1-2).

The use case 1 demonstration, located in Malmö in southern Sweden, investigated synergies between different energy carriers, to provide flexibilities through the storage capacity of heat networks and the thermal inertia of buildings. E.ON exploited in the Swedish demonstrator the thermal inertia of the building’s envelope, i.e. the inbound heat in the building. Heating devices of the buildings (HVAC) could be controlled and the corresponding thermal loads be shifted in time without impacting the customers’ comfort. This increases the flexibility of the system making it more resilient, which is an important feature as intermittent power increases in the national mix.

E.ON also operated a commercial heat pump in Malmö to increase the energy efficiency at a local energy centre. The energy centre contains a substation for district heating, cooling machines with cooling towers. The heat pump was utilizing waste heat from a data centre to provide heating to commercial customers and at the same time produced chill to the data centre to decrease the need of cooling machine operations. In case of high demand for electricity the heat pump could be switched off, and the buildings could be supplied by the conventional district heating and by cooling installations. This enhanced the overall system efficiency and provided flexibility to the electrical distribution grid. If a large number of heat pumps are aggregated, the platform will be able to offer substantial volumes of capacity to the DSO. The demonstrator provided evidence that there will be a large market for thermal flexibility.

Swedish Demonstrators – Malmö & Simris

Testimonial of the Swedish project team and stakeholders