Feasibility Study of Heating and Cooling Solutions for Wuxi Eco-City

Abstract: Wuxi city has a strong economy and is well located for an eco city project, only 128 km from Shanghai. Wuxi Eco-City is a Sino-Swedish initiative to build an environmentally friendly district. The 2.4 km2 area will include residential buildings, commercial buildings, offices and potentially a stadium. A preliminary urban plan has been made, providing housing for 20 000 people. China has a large energy demand and heating in the northern regions is responsible for around 30% of the annual energy usage. A heating solution that is efficient, scalable, sustainable and economical needs to be developed for the eco city to not increase the burden on the system. This report investigates what heating and cooling solutions would be optimal for the eco city, basing its evaluation on the performance, implementability, scalability and risk of the different solutions. A model was constructed for visualization purposes and to create a scenario of what the overall energy usage could be given certain parameters. The GSHP technology is deemed the most appropriate solution for Wuxi Eco-City and the estimated annual energy usage for the scenario was 1822 MWh.   Further economic analyses of the cases when the annual heating/cooling load is low should be made to determine if there are cases in which an ASHP or a VRV system should be preferred. An alternative suggestion is to implement a minor centralized heating and cooling system using WSHPs. Studies should be performed concerning effect on Lake Taihu, economic viability, and expected performance before an implementation.