Generating heat demand profiles of neighbourhoods

To size future energy infrastructures, that may include energy storage or demand side management, insight in heat demand profiles of neighbourhoods is a prerequisite. TNO developed a tool to generate heat demand profiles. Using public sources, the tool makes an inventory of buildings in the neighbourhood. For each building, a building archetype that most closely resembles it is selected, and its space heating demand profile is simulated using a dynamic resistance capacitance (RC) building model. To this, a repetitive daily profile for domestic hot water (DHW) preparation and cooking is added. The heat demand profile of the neighbourhood is calculated by summing the profiles of buildings in it, taking a dispersion of thermostat times into account. The current version of the tool, which is still under development, was validated by comparing the annual gas consumption of a number of neighbourhoods with actual data. While the tool predicted annual gas consumption of pre-1960 neighbourhoods reasonably well, for more recent neighbourhoods, the tool underestimated the annual gas consumption by typically 30%.