Thermoeconomic cost assessment in future district heating networks

This paper aims at showing the capabilities of thermoeconomic analysis for solving cost assessments in district heating systems both at user and producer sides. In the near future it is expected that multiple producers are allowed to supply heat to the same district heating network, similarly to what happens in the case of the electric grid. Not only the amount of heat they may produce should be properly accounted, but also its quality, and also the pumping power that is requested to supply a unity of thermal energy to the endusers. Moreover, buildings equipped with low temperature heating system allow better use of the thermal energy vector, thus allowing larger efficiency of thermal plants. In the present work, the use of thermoeconomics for the analysis of these aspects is proposed. The approach allows one performing cost assessment in district heating, taking into account the effects of investment and operating costs and thermodynamic irreversibilities in the cost formation of heat from its production in the plants to its use in the buildings. Simple examples are analyzed in order to provide a quantitative evaluation of the various cost terms, depending on the operating conditions, topology and characteristics of the users/producers.