Welcome to the fourth module of the course! In the previous module – Smart Charging and Integration of Electric Mobility, you learned smart strategies for the charging of electric vehicles using the fluctuating source of renewable energy and ancillary uses of electric vehicles for energy storage, concluded by a highly informative interview with Arjan Wargers on the integration of electric vehicles from the perspective of a grid operator.

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This module – Intelligent Control and Integration of Heating in the Energy Systems – is the fourth module of the course. In this module, you will learn about the significance of heating in the current and future energy systems and heating and cooling grids in detail, from the necessity to source and technologies.

Heating is one of the primary consumers of energy on the domestic scale. It is estimated that almost half of the total energy consumption in a household is space heating and cooling, and air-conditioning. Hence, the key to a sustainable energy system always involves sustainable management of the domestic heating systems. And the heating network is something that is always overlooked.

Domestic heating has been around for as long as civilizations existed. The concept of shelters also extends to a basic sense of comfort and heating is a major aspect of comfort. Historically, we have always used combustion for the generation of heat. The carrier of heat has varied over the course of time – from using the flue gases from burning to heating up air and using hot air as the heat carrier, to using hot water as the heat carrier through pipes. The combination of boilers and heat exchanging pipes was prevalent for a long time (and is still prevalent in many households to this day). Another cleaner solution that has existed for a long time was geothermal wells, albeit natural ground-level wells. Only recently have we slowly started switching to using electricity for domestic heat generation.

At the present, the switch to sustainable heating seems necessary as part of the integration of the energy system. And similar to electricity, the thermal energy system has its own characteristic features such as daily and seasonal variations in production, consumption, and transportation of energy. But the big question is: can electricity and heat be integrated? The first step in answering that question is understanding the characteristics of the heating network and that is the focus of this module.

This module will discuss the following topics:

• Trends in sustainable heating compared to electricity
• Thermal demand
• Thermal energy sources
• Heat pumps
• Underground energy storage

This module will be concluded with an interesting lecture by Marc Pijnenborg, a Project Developer at Engie group.  This lecture is a sneak peek into the state-of-the-art geothermally-powered district heating network developed at TU Delft capable of supplying the entire campus and also helping the town of Delft with domestic heating.

Ready to start? Let’s go!