title: What is the most promising heat concept from an investor perspective, for a biomass CHP plant in Croatia considering its technical and economic feasibility?
Creators: name: Fischer-Fürnsinn, Alexander
Publisher: name: TU Wien
Year: 2015
Subjects: subject: heat concept
subject: biomass chp
subject: tri-generation
subject: comparison
subject: investor

description: According to experience from the past, heat concepts for biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plants are necessary. Partially, according to valid feed-in tariff laws, already mandatory. The necessity derives from the economic side, where higher fuel input prices requires an additional income, and from the energetic side. A total efficiency of 25-35% is not state of the art any more. The motivator for this work, to find an answer to these questions in the master thesis, was a specific project, where an evaluation of different solutions have not been conducted but a high interest about the best solution still exists. The path to come closer to the answer was decided to be from an investor-s point of view and to look onto a project through his eyes. For those projects, which are obliged to have a heat concept, the availability of a feasible solution is mandatory to even be able to realize the project. Missing heat concepts could have already hindered the development or implementation in the past. The core questions to be answered is: a.) What is the most promising heat concept from an investor-s perspective for a biomass CHP plant in Croatia, considering its technical and economic feasibility? b.) Would the implementation of a district cooling network be feasible in Zagreb? What would be the lowest national electricity price for compressor chiller as alternative solution, to still create a breakeven of heat absorber solution? Main driver for renewable energy projects are the political frame conditions. These framework need to be analysed first, to form the project basement. Following that, the biomass CHP project need to be described to further define the characteristic of the heat, which should be used in a next stage heat concept. Beforehand with the investor, the heat concepts to be investigated in this master thesis, were defined. Beside fancy ones, the decision were on realistic possible projects, where also the investor would have an interest in the realization and the project fits to his portfolio. The pre-selected solutions are: 1. Building up an own district heating system 2. Installation of pellets production plant and use the heat for biomass drying 3. Heat use for cooling networks (Tri-Generation) To fulfil the criteria of the feed in tariff, minimum 50% efficiency must be reached. Out of the CHP project, the heat supply of 40.000 MWh/a is defined as minimum which need to be used. For each of the heat concepts, the technical solution is developed, investigated through literature research, own sources and experience, and finally summarized and described in this master thesis. To enable the comparison, an economic calculation according to NPV method is conducted. The main aim is a general comparison of the different solutions. According to the result, a detailed analyse need to be undertaken before realization. The result of this master thesis, as most promising heat concept, the implementation of a pellet production unit next to the biomass CHP plant turned out. The development of a district heating network seems not feasible due to necessary high heat prices to pay back the huge investment costs resulting in a wide village structure. A tri-generation is not possible due to missing heat consumers in Jasenovac coming from to the consumer structure, but would be feasible in a town structure with huge cool energy consumer in a narrow area. If an electrical driven chiller is compared with an absorption chiller, in case the installed district heating network sells also heat during heating season, the absorption variant serves better economic feasibility. Looking into a comparison of just cooling then the electrical driven solution is better and the electricity price need to be 5 times higher to reach equal feasible results of the absorption chiller. The conclusion which can be drawn, is that a state of the art biomass CHP plant needs to have a heat concept to reach an efficiency of 50% or higher. In Eastern Europe where a district heating system does not already exist, a heat concept is difficult to realize. However, there are solutions available. For every solution, the focus should be on the affordable energy price for the population, which will offtake the material produced, or the heat supplied. The best solution of a heat concept is the production of a separate good, which is also a renewable energy carrier, easily stored and transported which is needed by Central and Western Europe and can be finally used in the country of origin itself if the demand is created.