Community Energy / District Heating Expertise
In cold climates that Canadian cities face, community energy solutions and district
heating systems are a solution to the cost-effective use of environmentally friendly, low-carbon heat sources, such as biomass.
A
district heating system – sometimes dubbed as ‘thermal grid’ - consists of a centralized source for heating - such as a biomass heating
plant - and an underground pipe network that distributes that heat - commonly hot water - to a series of customer buildings, typically
for space heating and sanitary hot water needs.
Heat is generated in a centralized plant rather than individually inside each
and every building. The centralized approach allows applying technologies, such as combined heat & power or biomass boilers that
cannot be used cost-effectively on a building level. It also allows ‘greening’ facilities that for various reasons can not be made
energy efficient.
The term 'district heating' or 'coommunity energy' refers to a wide range of thermal networks, from small
micro-grids with up to 10 consumers to medium-sized networks supplying tens or hundreds of buildings to large utility-scale heating
networks with multiple heat generators. For biomass-fuelled applications, micro-grids and small-to medium sized networks are most
common.
Cornelius Suchy is looking at 16 year of experience from projects in
