HEAT NETWORKS
Digital twinning – the missing link in heat network management
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Creating a virtual replica of your heat network provides razor-sharp insight into its potential performance at every stage, from design to maintenance. This can cut costs and emissions by 40%, as well as helping to avoid some big headaches, says Stephen Morris, head of maintenance at Insite Energy
In this context, anything that can help to
hen dealing with critically important, complex, high value assets, taking a trial- and-error approach in a real-life environment is
rarely a good strategy. Having a degree of certainty about the impact of any intervention before it’s undertaken is, to say the least, highly desirable. This is even more true when the asset in question constantly changes depending on the number of properties it will serve, the equipment used to generate energy, or the pipe network; you can’t always rely on the past experience of your engineering team if they constantly face new system set-ups.
I’m talking, of course, about heat networks, which, when performing optimally, can use over 30% less energy than homes heated by individual gas boilers. Critical to the government’s strategy to reach Net Zero by 2050, their numbers are increasing rapidly; it’s estimated* that by 2030, communal and district heating systems will meet 14-20% of UK residential heat demand, rising to 43% by 2050.
Growing pains
This pace of growth is resulting in a problematic skills gap, translating on the ground into far too many UK heat networks operating at just 35- 45% efficiency**, due to deficient optimisation and poor maintenance. This in turn causes energy, operational and replacement costs to spiral. It also poses an existential threat to the entire heat network sector, impacting carbon reduction goals. Often, the organisation responsible for operating a heat network, AKA the heat supplier (usually the building’s owner), is unaware that their system is performing badly, because they don’t know what good performance looks like. They may start to get an inkling that’s something amiss, though, when bills are sky-high and the number of issues needing engineer call-outs starts to climb. However, the journey from realising there’s a
problem to understanding how to fix it can be long and winding, and the risk of encountering costly roadblocks and dead-ends is high.
improve the understanding and function of your heat network is worth considering.
What does a digital twin do?
Digital twinning, the accurate virtual replication of a real-life environment, has been deployed for some time to great effect in many industries, including manufacturing, construction, telecommunications, and retail. It’s used to improve monitoring, enhance performance and reduce downtime and it has the potential to help solve a host of pressing heat network issues. It can be an invaluable resource not only during the design stages of a new installation, but also to identify engineering problems within existing systems or anticipate equipment failures to support predictive maintenance regimes. Unlike data monitoring software, which tracks the live performance of individual components in real time, a digital twin models the hydronic design of the entire system as a schematic with great precision, to see if it’s as good as it can be - and if not, why not. You can then try out different options to see what would give you the best outcomes - without the expense, risk or disruption of real-world alterations. In other words, it lets you explore all possible approaches and solutions before you commit to anything.
Accurate answers mean big savings
Digital twinning can provide invaluable answers to specific questions such as, are the pumps sized correctly? Is the set-up unnecessarily complex? Is the installation adequate? And which intervention will offer the best value for money? It can also help inform big-ticket decisions like whether to install a combined heat and power (CHP) system or switch to a renewable energy heat generator, such as a biomass boiler or a heat pump. You can see the precise potential impact of each scenario on energy use and emissions and get a highly detailed breakdown of what each would cost.
The savings that can be achieved through twinning can be very large – in the region of 40% - meaning it can pay for itself quickly. The
risk of failure is also slashed by around 90%. And, once a twin has been created, it can be used repeatedly to save money and upheaval further down the line.
All this means that it makes sense to invest in digital twinning, sooner rather than later, to maximise returns.
Who’s already using it?
For around five years, we’ve been employing digital twinning software from Hysopt to identify and resolve inefficiencies in our clients’ heat networks and help them make purchasing decisions. Often the identified problems are to do with flow rates or temperature issues caused by hydronic design flaws. Hysopt is a specialist HVAC simulation and calculation software which takes a whole- system approach. It doesn’t replace the expertise of engineers; in fact it’s designed to be used by people with that level of technical knowledge.
It’s particularly well-suited to district schemes such as hospitals, but it can be effective anywhere. Among other use cases, it’s helped us to optimise the district heating system supplying the world-famous green houses at Kew Gardens, and to prevent a very large engineering undertaking that would have had little impact at a 190-unit apartment building in East London.
Still new
Digital twinning technology is still very much under-utilised in the heat network sector. Insite Energy is one of the first to deploy this technology to optimise underperforming heat networks in the UK. Yet, often it’s the older installations, which may have had design or commissioning errors, or poor handover, that have been left untreated and are escalating to cause expensive equipment failures, which could benefit the most.
At a time of seismic change in the heat network sector, with rapid market expansion and a new regulatory regime coming into force next year, twinning is an innovation that can help to steer us past some damaging pitfalls, for everyone’s benefit.
*Source: 2018 UK Market Report from The Association for Decentralised Energy ** Source:
https://www.heattrust.org/about- heat-networks
14 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER AUGUST 2024 Read the latest at:
www.bsee.co.uk
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