Seasonal storage for solar and industrial waste heat utilisation for urban district heating

The heat/cold demand of our building stock rarely matches the availability of energy supply from renewable energy sources (RES). This is even more noticeable at seasonal level. In cooling seasons, a substantial amount of the solar thermal energy available goes to waste. While in heating seasons, demand requirements often exceed available solar thermal energy. Another potential energy source available to communities is industrial waste heat. Commonly, large quantities of low-grade heat are discarded during industrial processes. This heat can be used in heating seasons, but often part is discarded when exceeding heating demand or in cooling seasons. This mismatch, between supply and demand can be overcome by seasonal thermal storage. This could enable the use of large-scale solar energy applications for buildings throughout all seasons of the year. This project focuses on the energy-efficient and cost-effective utilization of RES as well as industrial waste-heat for district heating (DH) through the use of large-scale, seasonal thermal storage solutions. One of the main goals is overcoming the bottleneck in deployment of large-scale solar thermal applications, and providing technical support for solar or other low-grade energy for large-scale heating applications for buildings. A-state-of-the-art district heating system with an underground storage of 0.5 million m3 , situated in Chifeng city, Inner Mongolia will be the project pilot demonstration. The collaborators, Tsinghua University and Eindhoven University of Technology as well as their industry partners for the project have extensive and complementary experiences that will support the development and implementation of the project. This project aims to drive the development of the solar thermal industry; promoting new economic structures and developments as well as achieving the requirements for economic and social sustainable development.