Modeling of a bidirectional substation in a district heating network: Validation, dynamic analysis, and application to a solar prosumer

Thermal grids will play a key role in the development of local energy communities and the achievement of 100% renewable societies. Such systems allow excess heat produced by distributed producers through renewable energy sources (also referred to as “thermal prosumers”) to be shared among other consumers characterized by high heat demand or who still depend on fossil fuels. However, to achieve more reliable results when performing energy analyses, it is of utmost importance to develop models of prosumers’ substations, where technical details (e.g., type of connections, heat exchangers, valves, etc.) and controllers are accounted for. Starting from the layout of a bidirectional substation for a thermal energy network proposed in the literature, this paper proposes a dynamic model that replicates the experimental setup in the TRNSYS environment. Validation results show a good matching between simulation and experiments in terms of dynamic behavior and energy balance. To show the capabilities of the proposed model, a prosumer with heat available from 205 m2 solar thermal collectors is considered as a case study. The analysis is performed by assuming two locations characterized by different irradiation values, i.e., Palermo (Italy) and Berlin (Germany). The results show that exchanging the excess heat produced on-site with a heating network allows the solar collectors to reach peak heat production, which is 130 kW and 110 kW for Palermo and Berlin, respectively. The surplus heat sold to the network is equal to 66% and 29% of the total energy exchange within the substation for Palermo and Berlin, respectively. Conversely, the self-consumption of the produced heat accounts for 21.2% and 30.6%, respectively. The model prospectively represents a valuable tool to develop feasibility studies in Thermal Energy Communities and assess the potential of innovative energy- and cost-effective operation strategies.