Vattenfall is a European-wide energy company and Vattenfall is committed to being fossil-free within one generation. They are the leading district heating operator in Europe and they want to deliver low carbon district heating and cooling solutions that can be zero-carbon in future.
Low carbon heat is key
‘When Vattenfall Heat UK selects a solution for a district heating or district cooling network, our priorities are to provide affordable heat for our final customers and also to have it as low carbon as possible with the potential to be decarbonised fully in the future’, says Sandra Šlihte, Head of Engineering at Vattenfall UK. ‘So having the ability to do a good design, a design that is based on the life time performance of the network is a number one thing in order to be able to provide that.’
Certainty behind the assumptions
‘We need to have good certainty behind the assumptions we make about the performance of the network itself, such as heat losses, electricity consumption, fuel consumption; so Hysopt gives u that ability to determine these assumptions for that specific design and help us quantify what those values would actually be by simulating them, rather than just guessing.’
‘It also gives us more certainty over the design choices we make. For example the combination of control logic and the thermal performance of different equipment is usually tricky to do and the simulation of this allows us to give that certainty that actually if we assume that low carbon plant will contribute to the heat network and generate 75% of the total heat produced, that gives us the certainty that it would actually do what it has been designed to do.’
Advantages of Hysopt in design stage
‘There are quite a few advantages of using Hysopt at the design stage. For example it allows us to front-load any problems that could occur on the design choices. It also has a good functionality which does a design check, which mean at the very early stages of the design it checks if hydraulically this system will perform well.’
Advantages of Hysopt for existing systems
‘From my experience it is also very, very valuable for an already operating system when we would like to explore how that system could be improved and what modernisation or performance improvement measures can be made. Hysopt allows a very easy, quick quantification of the benefits we could do. There are a few other good functionalities behind it that are helpful in our day to day work, such as being able to print out equipment and material schedules and it just improves the whole design process itself to have the ability to have it all in one tool.’
