Heating Amsterdam: network solutions

Abstract

This master thesis is about district heating in Amsterdam. In the context of climate change, the research looks at alternative ways to heat up buildings. One of the alternatives is a heat distribution network. A very efficient however costly way of relocating excess heat throughout the city. This research studies this potential alternative for gas heating. It focusses on the city of Amsterdam with a lot of infrastructure already in place and a wish to get rid of gas heating. In the first research question it looks at the most well known alternatives for gas heating and ranks them. District heating is thought to be one of the best solutions next to better isolation, however isolation does mean that gas still is used. The downside to district heating is the high investment cost. The second research question looks into the demand in the neighboured the Rivierenbuurt, Amsterdam.Overall, demand is above average in this particular area. The building year is one of the factors that influence the demand for energy. The third research question calculates the least cost pathway for district heating using the spanning tree algorithm. As well as the spanning tree, a number of hydrological tools are used to calculate the cost for a new network in the research area. Also benefits were calculated using the CO2 emission multiplied by the emission trading price. In the fourth question the model is tested in three different demand scenarios. This results into the insight that the cost are non-linearrelated to the demand points. For every connectionmore the cost do not increase linearly. Overall,the cost are many times higher than the overall benefits on yearly basis. However, this does not mean that district heating should be completely written off. One of the advantages of district heating is its compatibility with different heat sources and therefore small scale solutions can be profitable. Seen in a broader social perspective, this solution should be considered by policy makers because as a society we have try to stop climate change.