Setting straight a stupid statement

In one of my first columns I advocated not to retrofit buildings so as to keep heat demand up in the areas where Smart Thermal Grids (STG), or heating districts, can be economically viable. I have to come back to this statement as it is incorrect. 

STG’s

A thermal grid is ‘smart’ when it integrates and makes efficient use of potential future renewable energy sources as well as the operation of a grid structure allowing for distributed generation which may involve interaction with consumers. This ‘interaction with consumers’ is still an relatively unexplored phenomenon but it can be said that among others it builds on decentralised intelligent metering in order to get a close link between the power and the energy used by the buildings. This may be used for the continuous commissioning and payments. Wireless gathering of heat meter readings over short time intervals makes this possible. This may also include metering the sale of surplus heat from e.g. solar thermal from the individual building to the grid. This changes consumers into prosumers.

Drivers of STG’s

Several studies discovered that Smart (electrical and thermal) Grids, or District Energy Systems, play a central role for a sustainable future urban energy systems. Smart Ttermal and electrical grids need to be integrated to get to use each other’s full potential. Regarding Smart Thermal Grids, they have to be implemented as much as possible at the places where they can be economically viable because (1) they are portals to much needed renewable energy sources (such as deep geothermal heat and biomass produced heat from combined heat and power plants), (2) can facilitate an efficient energy supply through using waste heat, energy cascading, energy storage and integration with smart electrical grids and so (3) contribute to unlocking the (urban) energy transition.

Furthermore, and this is the point I want to make, it should be clear that the implementation of STG’s goes hand in hand with retrofitting existing buildings so that lower temperatures of domestic hot water (about 60 degrees Celsius instead of the widely used 90 degrees Celsius) is acceptable, because that results in e.g. lower investment costs for its infrastructure and paves the way for untapped renewable low-temperature heat sources.