Solar district heating with pit storage for Swedish conditions

Large scale solar district heating has increased fast recently and is a commercial industry in Denmark with over 100 systems. Pit storage with high solar fraction exist in several of these systems.

Economic factors in Sweden are not as good as in Denmark, but many scenarios show increased competition for biomass with higher prices and thus better viability for solar.

Sweden’s potential for solar district heating was shown in a recent study by the Swedish Energy Agency to be 0.17 – 6.0 TWh depending on assumptions. This project will start with a list of locations shown by this study as most viable.

More detailed techno-economic studies of solar district heat will be made for three towns from this list that have the right conditions for a pit storage that will also be used with a heat pump during low electricity prices.

Finally, results from these case studies will be extrapolated by using spatial analysis to estimate the number of systems that could be realistic to install in Sweden.