Designing and Evaluating District heating Networks with Simulation Based Urban Planning

The integration of energy and indoor comfort aspects into the early stage of urban planning is essential to conceive energy efficient urban structures and to avoid expensive compensation measures in the later building design. This could end up with increased insulation levels, complex air conditioning systems as well as increased energy demand during the building usage or inefficient energy supply concepts. Besides indoor comfort and the energy demand for heating, cooling, ventilation and daylight, energy supply options based on district heating (or cooling), have to be considered in an early stage of design as they may constitute highly efficient alternatives with respect to building specific heating units. Incidentally, this sub-project is part of the project titled Collaborative Design Platform (CDP) which is a computer based real time tool for urban development in early stages of design decision making. Referring to a subproject intending to integrate different energy aspects into the CDP, the paper concentrates on district heating networks (DHN). The objective of this study is to evaluate the possibilities of implementing a new plug-in in the early stage of urban development in order to design and evaluate the adequacy of district heating networks.