Lämpöpumppu on yksi parhaita työkaluja parantaa energiatehokkuutta

Oilon Oy will provide Lempäälän Lämpö Oy a with new kind of CHC heat pump solu­tion that will improv­ing the effi­ciency of the company’s energy pro­duc­tion and, if employed at a large scale, help combat climate change and promote the energy revolu­tion. The heat pump will also act as a bridge that allows dis­trict heating and elec­trical systems to com­mu­nic­ate with each other. Con­sequently, Lempäälän Lämpö has found heat pumps to be one of the best ways of improv­ing energy effi­ciency.

“It is extremely inter­est­ing to witness first hand how tech­no­lo­gical advances in equip­ment and systems as well as new ideas for util­iz­ing exist­ing equip­ment in new con­fig­ur­a­tions create new pos­sib­il­it­ies. These new con­fig­ur­a­tions will improve energy effi­ciency and help to achieve carbon neut­ral­ity targets both locally and across the entire energy system,” says Katja Kurki-​Suonio, Exec­ut­ive Dir­ector, Finnish Dis­trict Heating and Cooling Asso­ci­ation.

Com­bined heating and cooling, CHC in short, refers to a heat pump system inten­ded for sim­ul­tan­eous pro­duc­tion of heating and cooling. In the muni­cip­al­ity of Lempäälä, Finland, the solu­tion will include a dis­trict loop booster unit for util­iz­ing thermal energy in the local heating plant’s return pipe.

”Lempäälä will be the first loc­a­tion where these con­nec­tions are integ­rated under one and the same system”, says Jussi Alpua, Oilon’s Chief Busi­ness Officer for Indus­trial Heat Pumps and Chillers.

In dis­trict heating systems, return water tem­per­at­ure is usually around 40–50 °C. The com­bin­a­tion of a CHC heat pump and a dis­trict loop booster can be used to recover 10 degrees of the heat. This improves the energy effi­ciency of biofuel-​firing dis­trict heating plants.

“What this means in prac­tice is that we produce dis­trict heating with elec­tri­city. However, we will use only renew­able energy for the purpose. We are con­nec­ted to the Nordic elec­tri­city markets, and whenever there is cheap renew­able energy avail­able, we will utilize this in our heat pumps”, says Lempäälän lämpö’s Exec­ut­ive Dir­ector Toni Laakso.

Accord­ing to Laakso, the solu­tion will also serve the local dis­trict cooling network.

“Many cooling con­sumers require cooling only during the summer; at other times, the system would remain idle. With this com­bined CHC and booster solu­tion we can increase the system’s oper­a­tional time. Fur­ther­more, we will no longer need to dump the energy extrac­ted by the cooling process into the atmo­sphere.”

Driving the energy revolu­tion

Accord­ing to Laakso, if imple­men­ted at a larger scale, a similar com­bin­a­tion of CHC heat pumps and dis­trict loop boost­ers could serve the entire power system. Cross-​sector integ­ra­tion within the energy industry is a big part of the ongoing energy revolu­tion.

“A dis­trict heating system is home to sig­ni­fic­ant, highly-​controlled thermal energy streams, typ­ic­ally within densely pop­u­lated areas. Sim­il­arly to elec­tric bat­ter­ies, the dis­trict heating network could serve as an energy store for the power dis­tri­bu­tion system and even out peaks and valleys in system within a 24-hour time­frame. For this to be pos­sible, the dif­fer­ent energy systems need to be able to com­mu­nic­ate seam­lessly.”

Read more here.

Author: Satu Tähkä
Images: Lempäälän Lämpö Oy, Oilon Oy