Retrofitting, district heating and energy storage: Neighborhood energy planning

Abstract

We compare simulated energy retrofitting of individual buildings with energy refurbishments optimized at the scale of the neighborhood. For the neighborhood case, buildings can also be connected together through a heat network. We use a detailed three-dimensional model to estimate heating needs (CitySim) and a mixed-integer linear optimizer to analyze different options for energy refurbishment, including various heating technologies. According to our simulations, planning at the neighborhood scale results in slightly lower costs (about -5%) and lower C02 emissions (about -60%) than planning energy refurbishment at the building scale, showing that integrated planning of energy refurbishment is beneficial from both environmental and economical points of view.