District Heating Potential and a Danish Heat Atlas Based on Metered Heat Demand Data

4DH PhD Fellow Lars Grundahl successfully defended his PhD thesis on the 14th of December 2017.

The thesis investigates the expansion potential of district heating in Denmark under a number of different conditions. Firstly, the economic expansion potential is compared for consumer-economic and socio-economic calculations. The study finds that only approximately half of the potential for each of the economic approaches occur in the same areas. Secondly, the potential is investigated under current conditions and compared to future scenarios with 50% heat savings in space heating and implementation of low-temperature district heating. It is found that low-temperature district heating alone is not enough to mitigate the negative economic impact on district heating arising from substantial heat savings. The implementation of low-temperature district heating has to go hand-in-hand with other measures to improve the economic feasibility of district heating in a future with lower heat demands in buildings.

A new version of the Danish Heat Atlas is developed using the metered heat demand data to estimate the average heat consumption in the different Danish building types. This ensures that heat demand estimates are made individually for all building categories in the Danish Building and Dwelling register. Further, with the new data, it is possible to investigate the accuracy of the heat atlas. This is used to improve the knowledge on how well the heat atlas estimates the actual heat demand depending on the number of buildings included in a sample and across the different building categories.

For more information related to this work, contact Lars Grundahl at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..