Optimization of Distributed Cooling and Cold Storage in Sweden : Case Study - Norrenergi AB

Abstract: District cooling supply is vital for service, commercial and industrial sectors like hospitals, data centers, supermarkets and sensitive laboratory facilities. The main cooling demand in the case of Sweden also originates from these sectors. The cooling demand in Stockholm is expanding mainly because of demand for comfort cooling, and data centers are rising. To cover the existing cooling demand and rising cooling demand, different cooling strategies have to be employed for optimal production of cold. This project concerns the optimization of such a district cooling system with primarily cold storage. This is achieved by choosing a case study network, namely considering the district cooling network of Norrenergi AB, in Sweden. Norrenergi AB is a company involved in supplying district cooling for cold consumers situated around Solna and Sundbyberg regions. The company provides around 70 GWh district cooling per year. The sources for the district cooling supply are free cooling, electrically driven chillers, and cold recovery from heat pumps. Besides these cold sources, currently, the parts of the peak cold demand are shaved using cold storage that is more cost-effectively charged during night-time, adopting the concept of power-to-cold. In running the district cooling system operation, Norrenergi AB’s current electricity mix is 100% renewable. In this thesis work, the existing district cooling network of Norrenergi AB is modeled using BoFiT optimization software (which is the base scenario), and then four future scenarios are developed, considering new, additional cold storages. The scenarios developed were meant to further optimize the existing district cooling grid to cater to the same existing total demand. This is assessed by integrating respective cold storages having larger (i.e., 15 MW capacity) or smaller (i.e., two cold storages each with 3 MW capacity) into the existing district cooling grid. The 15 MW capacity cold storage is integrated into Sundbybergsverket (Scenario 1) and in Frösundaverket (Scenario 2). While, from the smaller cold storages, the first one is integrated into the system in a manner that it supplies cooling for selected cooling customers, that is Scenario 3. The second small cold storage integrated in a way that supplies cooling to the entire grid, which is Scenario 4. Similar to the existing cold storage, in developed scenarios as well, the power-to-cold concept is utilized by charging the cold storage during the time in which the electricity price is lower (i.e., at night). The key outcome of this thesis work reveals that all the developed scenarios lead to cost savings in terms of the consumed electricity for producing DC. The achieved cost saving from each of the four scenarios developed are 23%, 4%, 13%, and 14%, respectively. Among all these scenarios, the first scenario has led to the largest cutback of DC production cost and impliesthat incorporating larger cold storages in cooling production plants results in higher savings. A performed sensitivity analysis also implies that increasing the supply capacity of free cooling results in production cost savings. Besides, an increased cooling capacity by 30% with respect to the base scenario results in a 10.6% cost saving. This saving infers that it is good to utilize free cooling as far as there is an opportunity to increase the use of free cooling.