District heating and cooling systems for communities through power plant retrofit and distribution network. Executive summary, September 1978-May 1979. [City of Detroit]

Following DOE's RFP for District Heating and Cooling Through Power Plant Retrofit, Detroit Edison and the City of Detroit decided to respond, even though it would mean redirection and a delay in their plan that was already under study. The analysis reported here proceeded in six steps. The first step was to identify the service area under the constraint that it be within the City of Detroit and in close proximity to the candidate plant. With the basic service area to be considered established, the load within the service area was defined for the five categories of end-users chosen: general residential, major residential, commercial, institutional, and industrial. Parallel to all tasks and continuing throughout the phase, a definition of institutional requirements - including regulatory, legal, and licensing aspects of a district heating and cooling project - was carried out to determine the ability of Detroit Edison to own and operate such a project and to define the limitations or problems that may be encountered in the project. The capacity of the retrofitted power plant to supply heating and cooling was determined as a basis for sizing the distribution systems and for determining which end-user loads could be served. The distribution systems were developed on an incremental basis to simulate the actual growth pattern of such a system, and were tested iteratively with the economic analysis to establish the optimum service area to produce the minimum cost to the end-user and a reasonable payback to the system owner. The economic analysis was performed based on matrices of cost parameters which determined the cost to the end-user, return to the system owner, and payback period for the system to determine the economic feasibility of the district heating and cooling system