Uncertainties in the daily operation of a district heating plant

Studies have found that district heating (DH) systems should play an important role in future sustainable energy systems, but that DH has to adapt to lower heat demands. This means adapting to reduced operation hours for units essential for DHs integration in other parts of the energy system, such as CHP. It will therefore likely be increasingly important to increase the value per operation hour. The value can be increased by offering balancing for the electricity system. This in turn increases the uncertainties in the daily operation planning of the DH system. In this paper the Danish DH plant Ringkøbing District Heating is used as a case to investigate what costs market uncertainties can incur on a DH plant. It is found that the market uncertainties in a 4 months simulated period increased Ringkøbing District Heatings costs by less than 1%. Several factors are however not included in this paper.