D5.1: RES and excess/waste heatintegration potential
Creators: name: Fernandez, Asier
name: Naveran, Gorka
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: InterPED aims to enable the concept of Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) in communities across Europe, promoting the use of clean and renewable energies, waste heat sources, and storage capabilities aiming to have a positive contribution towards net-zero goals. In this spirit, Work Package five (WP5) is focusing on the long-term planning of PEDs, conducting Life-Cycle Costing (LCC) and Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) impact assessment of feasible renewable energy sources (RES) and excess/waste heat (E/WH) integration possibilities.

As an opening phase of WP5, a comprehensive estimate evaluation of the renewable energyharvesting and E/WH integration opportunities at each pilot site is performed in this deliverable (D5.1). This assessment builds upon the technical characteristics of the pilot sites reported in deliverable D3.1 and serves as a foundation for the subsequent tasks that will be conducted within WP5. State-of-the-art models used to derive the findings presented in this document are described in Section 2.

The main assessment of the RES and E/WH potential in all the project pilot sites is presented and discussed in Section 3 focusing on three main areas:



RES technologies for electricity generation,

RES technologies for thermal generation, and

Excess/waste heat exploitation possibilities.


This comprehensive assessment relies on a deep understanding of the context and the plans of the pilot sites (deliverable D3.1), internal analyses conducted by experts in the field using Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to assess specific renewable energy sources and previous related studies by the pilot site managers, Giroa-Veolia, Findhorn Innovation Research & Education, Azienda Elettrica di Massagno, and Municipality of Alba Iulia.

In addition to deriving the RES potential at regional level based on the identification of relevant generation profiles. from solar and wind maps, specific projections have been evaluated for all pilot sites, respecting their different technical and legislative context. These are presented in section 3 of this document.

The exploitation possibilities of waste heat have been identified in two pilot sites—Ecovillage Findhorn and Arena Innovation Community. In the first one, heat from treated effluents is valorised through a water-to-water heat pump to provide heating services to a multi-family building. In the second pilot, waste heat generated from the combustion process of a biomass boiler is considered as a heat source of an air-to-air heat pump (~15 to 20 kW) to regulate the temperature of the service rooms in the swimming centre to replace electrical heaters.

Finally, the integration of E/WH enhances heat pump efficiency (COP increased by 17%) and significantly boosts financial performance (6.7% reduction in net electricity costs in the winter and an even higher, 28.3% savings in the spring period).

Section 4 details a market-based assessment of the Ecovillage Findhorn pilot site potential for RES and E/WH harvesting, conducted using the GSY local energy market simulation tool that investigates the benefits of activating local, peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading. Four different scenarios, each simulated for two different periods (winter and spring) are considered. The scenarios are described as :



A base case scenario with the current asset and market configuration with one difference: excess heat is not harnessed. No P2P energy trading.

A scenario with the excess heat potential harnessed and no P2P energy trading, which is the actual Findhorn site configuration.

A scenario to evaluate the impact of P2P energy trading with the current RES configuration.

A scenario to evaluate the impact of P2P trading with additional RES and E/WH harnessed.


Main findings of the supplementary market-based assessment of RES and E/WH potential are that:



Peer-to-peer energy trading brings significant economic and environmental advantages, especially in warmer seasons (23.8% cost savings and 97.2% increase inself-sufficiency in the spring);

The expansion of RES, including the increase in maximum power consumption of heat pumps, along with their storage capacity (domestic hot water and space heating buffers volume), the PV capacity, and the total battery storage, yields substantial financial savings when combined with E/WH integration and P2P energy trading (amounting to £221.4 difference in absolute terms for the simulated week in April and significant increase of self-sufficiency in both seasons).

The integration of E/WH enhances heat pump efficiency (COP increased by 17.1%) and significantly boosts financial performance (6.7% reduction in net electricity costs in the winter and an even higher, 28.3% savings in the spring period), with an accompanying positive environmental impact (self-sufficiency increased by 7.7% in January and by 13.5% in April).


The Ecovillage Findhorn pilot site was chosen for a supplementary assessment of the P2P energy trading potential as it provided more granular and extensive data than the other pilots at this early stage of the project. Nonetheless, even in this case, there were data gaps supplemented with synthetic data, indicating that asset-level measurements are an important precondition both for more accurate advanced simulation studies and the actual implementation of digital tools that aim to take advantage of demand response and local energy market optimisation via peer-to-peer trading.