Meeting the annual heat demand

Abstract

The paper describes a study of the optimum utilization of a low temperature geothermal field in one of the larger cities in China. The main task is to meet the annual space heating demand by seeking the combination of geothermal energy (low running costs) and conventional boilers and/or heat pumps (low investment cost) that result in the overall lowest energy cost. Different combinations of heat sources are compared for different sizes of areas are considered. The solutions for different sizes vary and play a main role in finding a strategy to meet the heat demand. The environmental aspects of the district heating system are considered as well. Finally the energy price to the consumer is calculated for the project??s amortization time of 10 and 25 years respectively.