Techno-economic analysis of demand side flexibility to enable the integration of distributed heat pumps within a Swedish neighborhood

The energy infrastructure in Stockholm faces an imminent problem caused by the saturation of the electricity distribution grid capacity. Given promising economic savings, a few city neighborhoods have decided to switch from district heating to domestic heat pumps. Thus, technical concerns arise. This study aims at proposing demand side management solutions to unlock the integration of distributed heat pumps. A techno-economic analysis is presented to assess the potential of using the buildings' thermal mass as energy storage. By means of co-simulation, the electricity grid and the buildings are coupled through a feedback control. The grid capacity is monitored to avoid overloadings. The indoor temperature is controlled in order to serve as thermal energy storage. It is found that, given the grid's capacity limits, the infrastructure should still be partly connected to the district heating (around 7% of the heat demand). This dependency decreases of around 1% when the buildings' thermal mass is used as thermal storage, with a range of +/- 0.5 degrees C. On a heat pump level, the disconnections decrease up to 50%, depending on the buildings' thermal mass capacity. Thus better techno-economic (about -2% on the levelized cost) and environmental (about -1% on the CO2 emissions) performances are unlocked. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.