RT Journal Article
T1 The role of district heating systems to provide balancing services in the European Union
A1 Boldrini, A
A1 Jiménez-Navarro, Juan-Pablo
A1 Crijns-Graus, WHJ
A1 Van den Broek, MA
K1 Aire acondicionado
AB European electricity markets ensure the matching between supply and demand at all times. Due to their timescaleoperations, the balancing markets are the last resources to achieve so and ensure the grid frequency.The increasing shares of non-dispatchable power capacities intensify the demand for flexibility. District heatingsystems (DHs) are potential sources of flexibility if interface technologies are in place like CHP or power-to-heat,together with thermal storage. This study assesses the technical potential of DHs to contribute to frequencycontainment reserves (FCR), automatic and manual frequency restoration reserves (aFRR and mFRR) markets.Through a review of case-studies, we gain insight and derive appropriate assumptions to estimate the potential atcountry and EU levels. Based on the POTEnCIA Central scenario up to 2050 — a description of the evolution ofthe EU energy system with the assumption of no further policies introduced beyond 2017 —, we find that thepotential is highest for the provision of aFRR, followed by mFRR and FCR. Specifically, the aFRR technicalpotential is currently 32 GW — 4 times the aFRR contracted in 2019 in the EU — and it only slightly decreases by2050. Overall, this study highlights the lack of data on current (and future) DHs and their variety in size andcomposition. A sensitivity analysis is performed by examining different scenarios for DHs deployment. Thisresearch emphasizes the large untapped potential to exploit flexibility from DHs, however, the evaluation of theactual potential shall be done on a case-by-case basis.
PB Elsevier
YR 2021
FD 2021-11-21
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10630/34030
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10630/34030
LA eng
NO A. Boldrini, J.P. Jiménez Navarro, W.H.J. Crijns-Graus, M.A. van den Broek, The role of district heating systems to provide balancing services in the European Union, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 154, 2022, 111853, ISSN 1364-0321,
NO Under a Creative Commons license
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 22 ene 2026