Aerial view of Matinkyla neighborhood of Espoo, Finland. First snow in the city.

Oilon will deliver a 1.3-​megawatt heat pump system to Fortum in Espoo, Finland. The air-​water heat pump will be the largest of its kind in Finland, and it will replace coal as a primary energy source. The system will produce both dis­trict heating and dis­trict cooling. After a pilot period, the facil­ity is planned to be expan­ded to 11 mega­watts.

“Industrial-​scale heat pumps are an excel­lent means to replace coal energy and cut carbon emis­sions in energy pro­duc­tion,” said Thomas Ekholm, Manager of the New Solu­tions unit of Fortum’s heating and cooling busi­ness.

When com­pleted, the 11-​megawatt heat pump system will replace coal energy by as much as 92 gigawatt-​hours yearly. Emis­sions will be reduced by over 31 000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equi­val­ent to omit­ting 14 500 cars from traffic every year.

“Outside air is an inex­haust­ible source of primary energy. It can be used to produce large quant­it­ies of heat, thus redu­cing the burning of fuels in dis­trict heating,” Ekholm says.

The new facil­ity will be inaug­ur­ated in the first months of 2021. The heat pump system is delivered by Oilon, a leading Finnish tech­no­logy company spe­cial­ising in envir­on­ment­ally friendly energy systems. The deliv­ery includes plan­ning, installing, com­mence­ment, and con­trolling oper­a­tions.

“We have been vig­or­ously tweak­ing the tech­no­logy of large heat pumps for around fifteen years. As an example of their poten­tial, the heat pump in Espoo will be able to produce dis­trict heating of almost 100 degrees Celsius out of freez­ing air,” says Oilon’s Sales Manager Jussi Alpua.

The Espoo facil­ity is a so-​called CHC facil­ity (com­bined heating and cooling), pro­du­cing both dis­trict heating and dis­trict cooling. Dis­trict heating is the most common means of heating build­ings in Finland. Dis­trict cooling, in turn, is rapidly becom­ing more common in large cities.

Dis­trict heating and cooling are largely pro­duced with the same tech­no­logy, but dis­trict cooling demands a sep­ar­ate piping network for dis­trib­ut­ing the cold water. Indus­trial heat pumps pro­du­cing dis­trict cooling are an extremely energy-​efficient means for cooling houses, com­pared to sep­ar­ate apartment-​specific heat pumps.

The Espoo facil­ity will have two heat sources, outside air and the waste heat pro­duced by the cooling network.

“It will be fas­cin­at­ing to optim­ise a large-​scale air-​water heat pump and to follow what effi­ciency ratios we can achieve in varying outside tem­per­at­ures,” Alpua said.

The Min­istry of Eco­nomic Affairs and Employ­ment of Finland has granted the project an invest­ment aid of three million euros. The aid is tar­geted at pro­jects that vol­un­tar­ily accel­er­ate phasing out coal-​burning in dis­trict heating power plants. The min­istry pri­or­it­ises pro­jects that utilise non-​burning tech­no­lo­gies.

“Energy com­pan­ies are a large cus­tomer segment for us. By now prac­tic­ally all of them find it crucial to reduce carbon emis­sions. Large-​scale heat pumps speed up this devel­op­ment. They turn elec­tri­city into heat with a high effi­ciency ratio, while util­ising waste heat that would oth­er­wise be lost to the atmo­sphere,” Alpua said.

The Vermo heat pump system is a part of the Clean Heat project by the city of Espoo and Fortum. The project aims to make dis­trict heating carbon neutral in Espoo, Kirkkonummi, and Kauni­ainen before 2030. The dis­trict heating net­works in the area serve 250 000 end-​users in both homes and offices.

Thomas Ekholm of Fortum believes that heat pump tech­no­logy will play a big role in Fortum’s busi­ness in the future.

“For us, this tech­no­logy is very com­pel­ling indeed. Heat pumps enable the shift from burning fuels to carbon-​neutral heat pro­duc­tion. The co-​operation with Oilon has been exem­plary, and we expect that the project will be a great success,” Ekholm said.

Contact:

Martti Kukkola
Chief Busi­ness Officer, Indus­trial Heat Pumps and Chillers, Oilon
martti.kukkola@oilon.com
+358-400-312060