The ring project : The impact of a local heating and cooling network at Uppsala University Hospital area

Region Uppsala manages the buildings at the hospital area in Uppsala and has in recent years worked intensively with energy efficiency measures affecting the buildings, which have also yielded successful results. To continue Region Uppsala’s energy efficiency effort, Region Uppsala intends to install a local heating and cooling network for the hospital area. The intent of the local heating and cooling network is to enable the transfer of excess heat and cooling. Region Uppsala also plans to install a larger refrigerator (>1,000 kW cooling) that will provide the hospital area with cold and heat. This project is divided into three major parts, the first part of which involves examining how much residual heat is used from the existing refrigerators in the hospital area today, and what difference the introduction of local heating and cooling networks could make regarding the use of residual heat. The second part of the project consists of investigating the impact a larger refrigerator with 4.4 MW of cooling capacity could have on the hospital area's need for district heating and district cooling. Both the difference in energy and power are investigated. The third and final part of the project consists of examining two different operating strategies for the larger refrigerator to expand its use rate. Then the dimensioning of the cooling capacity of the refrigerator is analysed for the different operating strategies. The results of the project show that the introduction of a local heating and cooling network in the hospital area could contribute to the use of significantly more residual heat from today's existing refrigerators. Calculations show that the larger refrigerator could reduce the energy demand from both district heating and district cooling by 2,820 MWh and 7,050 MWh respectively, as well as reduce the subscribed power only from the district cooling by 3,830 kW. In addition, the analysis of the dimensioning of the larger cooling machine shows that the cooling capacity would be oversized to the cooling needs in the hospital area