Development of an innovative heat supply concept for a new housing area

The energy demand of buildings for heating and cooling is responsible for more than one third of the world's final energy consumption. Therefore the identification of innovative heat supply concepts based on renewable energies is required. The utilization of renewable energies in combination with efficient supply technologies increases the "sustainability" of new housing areas. For the new housing area "Zum Feldlager", located in Kassel (Germany), various supply concepts are investigated. Main objective is the development of an innovative and optimised heat supply concept based on renewable energies and a low temperature district heating. Central challenge in achieving this objective is the identification of the most promising and efficient technical solution for practical implementation. In order to identify the best possible system solution, different centralised and decentralised supply strategies have been investigated and compared. The most promising heat supply concept is based on a central ground source heat pump in combination with a low temperature district heating (40°C supply temperature) for space heating and decentralised solar thermal systems for domestic hot water preparation. The advantages of this supply variant are comparable low annual heating costs and about 60% lower CO2-emissions in comparison to the reference. This project is a cooperative activity and of the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP) in Kassel, Institute for decentralized Energy Technologies (IdE), Kassel University, the City of Kassel and the local utility company Staedtische Werke Kassel AG. The paper presents a description of the new housing area as well as the evaluation of the various supply concepts.