RELaTED, a flexible approach to the deployment and conversion of DH networks to low temperature

RELaTED concept was presented on the 5th International Solar District Heating Conference in Graz, Austria. Roberto Garay and Victor Sanchez, of Tecnalia, drafted a paper to describe the RELaTED decentralized Ultra-Low Temperature DH network scheme. You can read the abstract of this paper. District heating (DH) systems are key systems for the de-carbonization of heating energy in European Cities. In order to allow for this transition, while guaranteeing competitive energy costs, conversion of DHs is required. DH operation temperature needs to be reduced in order to increase the performance of renewable systems and operation criteria needs to be adopted for the introduction of weather-dependent, distributed heat sources such as solar systems. This paper presents the RELaTED decentralized Ultra-Low Temperature DH network scheme, and its adaptation to several operational schemes such as new and existing DH networks, with different levels of complexity. Transitory phases in the conversion process are discussed