Supporting municipalities to achieve heat transition

His colleague Ivo Vos, business developer for heat and cold- subsurface solutions:

‘‘There is a proposed Collective Heat Act before the Dutch House of Representatives that aims to have half a million new connections to a collective heat supply by 2030. Moreover, after drafting their Heat Transition Vision, municipalities are hard at work on a next version or incorporating it into the Regional Energy Strategy (RES). We have a whole range of tools, data, and knowledge available, with which to map all the options and make the right decisions.’’

Key questions

Municipalities are facing far-reaching choices and are seeking answers to many questions.

• What is the current and future demand for heat?
• What renewable sources like geothermal or waste heat from industry are there in our area?
• How can heat and cold best be transported to homes?
• Should we store heat and cold underground, where, and in what form?
• Should the heat, or cold, be upgraded, and if so, how and where?

Tools

Geothermal potential

ThermoGIS is a publicly available tool that displays in a web environment the potential for geothermal energy in a municipality or region based on the subsurface characteristics. Public authorities and businesses are making great use of it. The strength of this tool is that it shows both the amount of geothermal heat to be produced (technical feasibility) and the cost (economic feasibility).

Heat storage possibilities

‘‘Combining sustainable heat generation, for example from geothermal energy, but also "power-to-heat", with subsurface storage at high temperatures provides more flexibility in the grid and lower costs for society,’ says Ivo Vos. With the REGIS II model, the potential for heat storage in the shallow subsurface (up to 500 metres) can be evaluated. It shows in 3D which subsurface layers are suitable for this purpose. The model contains subsurface information for the whole country.’’

Designing heat grids

Another support tool developed by TNO is the Design Toolkit. With this, policymakers can identify what options exist in their municipality to achieve optimal heat supply. The tool shows how heat sources and households can be connected, at what temperatures, whether and how storage is possible, and many other relevant outcomes to design a future-proof collective, regional or local heat grid. The toolkit provides an insights into how to deploy such a network intelligently at the lowest possible cost.