Advanced urban cooling, a building cooling approach in which cooled water from a central facility passes through pipes to buildings, allowing them to cool without the need for their own energy-intensive air conditioning systems. This not only reduces the carbon footprint of each building, but also provides a less expensive way to cool the interior of buildings.
Urban cooling concepts have been around since the 1960s, said Oddgeir Gudmundsson, a district cooling expert at engineering firm Danfoss in Denmark. “It’s a relatively old technology,” he said.
Although widespread in warm regions such as Qatar and Dubai, the generation is now beginning to be used in Europe, as the demand for cooling begins to accumulate as temperature rises. “The demand for cooling in Europe is not as evolved. “as in the U. S. or Japan, for example,” Gudmundsson said. But it’s getting more and more (popular). “
While in Europe less than 1% of refrigeration equipment is district refrigeration equipment, in some countries it has been more easily followed, such as Sweden, where its market share is around 25%.
In district cooling, water is channeled to buildings from a central facility where it has cooled. This water can be used in ventilation systems. The air circulating in the pipes pushes the bloodless air into the building vents to serve as air conditioning, the water then being recycled to be cooled again.
District cooling can be much more effective than classic air conditioning systems, which rely on appliances built in a more sensitive, energy-intensive building. District cooling can also benefit from using refrigerated water from herbal sources, such as a lake, to reduce energy requirements.
This can mean loose cooling if you have access to rivers, deep lakes or oceans, gudmundsson explains. “If you have a bloodless climate like in Stockholm or Copenhagen, you can take the bloodless ambient air. Most have coolers that cool the water. , which circulates in the pipes of the central facilities to consumers. »
District cooling is more suitable for advertising buildings in Europe, which require year-round cooling, unlike residential buildings, which at most only want to be refrigerated for up to 3 months during the summer component. “In residential buildings, the demand for cooling is very limited,” Gudmundsson said.
However, urban cooling may play a role in the opposite combat to climate replacement in Europe. It can be up to ten times more effective than traditional cooling systems, particularly by reducing the force intake of a giant number of buildings and allowing a significant step towards carbon. impartiality. ” In an unbiased carbon system, it is very important that we reduce (energy) peaks as much as possible,” Gudmundsson said.
There are also other benefits to urban cooling. It reduces noise due to the need for noisy air conditioning units, while freeing up an area in buildings, such as on their roofs, where other amenities can be built, such as a lawn or a non-unusual area, and adds flexibility to electrical power. electricity grid, allowing the use of more renewable energy in cooling systems by shifting the demand for electrical energy to times when more renewable energy is available.
Energy savings
With many district cooling formulas already in use, it is vital to discover how existing formulas are used. Susana López, from the Tekniker Research and Technology Center in Spain, was coordinator of the INDIGO project, which sought to do just that through the use of algorithms and other techniques. to an urban cooling formula in a hospital in northern Spain.
“The concept of INDIGO was to expand other control systems for production, distribution and consumption,” Lopez said, “to the way we deliver cooling to a building, distribution power, and production control. “
The task did this in three ways. The first was to expand a set of rules to optimize the pumps that are used to move water in the grid. Although this is only a pilot assignment, the hospital kept the formula in place “because of the significant savings it has made,” Lopez said. , with energy savings of more than 50% after one year of operation.
Another progression to increase the temperature difference between incoming and outgoing water, reducing heat gains in the grid, leading to an energy saving of approximately 18%. The third to analyze the amount of cooling needed on site, to replace the capacity at which water supply to buildings was cooled.
The effects showed that existing district cooling systems can be more effective without the need for more appliances or infrastructure. “We have replaced the means of production or distribution,” Lopez said. “What we’ve done is come up with measurements along the network itself to manage them in a different way. “
While projects like this are promising, more widespread adoption of district cooling is not without challenges. One of the disruptions is that the installation of the systems can be harmful, resulting in the closure of the streets of a domain the installation of the pipes. “This can be a big problem,” Gudmundsson said.
Another is that district cooling can be expensive in the first place and the load savings would possibly take some time to see. “These are quite expensive projects and there is a lot of investment up front,” Gudmundsson said, with little investment from the government to put the formulas into effect. “As far as I know, no district cooling formula is subsidized,” he said. However, once it is put into force, it can pass quickly, as evidenced by its widespread adoption in Sweden.
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