At the moment, the transition to a low-carbon heating supply in Europe is often made difficult by high costs and planning expenditure. Energy-efficient and economical designs for the supply of heat, the geographically-optimised usage of existing potential, and the effective expansion of (local) heat networks often fail due to the high costs and inadequate tools and programmes currently available for such planning.
The EU project, THERMOS (Thermal Energy Resource Modelling and Optimisation System), launched in October, is intended to help authorities and local communities with the planning and modernisation of their low-carbon heating supplies through the development of an open-source programme. dena is one of the partners implementing project activities in Germany. The aim of the project is to create maps for as many towns and cities in Europe as possible, showing details of their heating and cooling needs, as a basis for efficient planning and supply. This should provide the knowledge necessary for the planning of cost-effective, low-carbon heating supplies in Europe.
In all, fifteen European partners will work on developing and using the THERMOS tools in the next three years. As a first step, methods and instruments for determining heating and cooling needs, as well as the capacity for generating heat – in geographical and technical terms, and also in terms of energy-efficiency – will be established in four pilot cities. The pilot cities are Granollers (Spain), Jelgava (Latvia), Islington in London (Great Britain) and Warsaw (Poland). Following the successful use of the THERMOS tools in these four cities, the tools will be introduced to four partner cities, thereby expanding their use in Europe. dena is responsible for the introduction of the THERMOS tools in Berlin, in cooperation with the Berlin Senate. Warsaw is partnered with Berlin.
The inaugural meeting of the THERMOS project took place on 11 and 12 October in London. The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) in Britain is leading this European Horizon 2020 project. In all, fifteen partners are involved in the project, among them universities, energy agencies, authorities and consultants from Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain.
Initial information on the project and the partners will be available soon.