Jamestown Board of Public Utilities engineers join delegation to Denmark to learn more about thermal energy, district heat
Two Jamestown Board of Public Utilities engineers recently received first-hand experience with the Danish approach to thermal energy and district heating.
BPU Deputy General Manager Kris Sellstrom and BPU ReTool District Heat Manager Derek Johnson participated in a New York State thermal energy delegation to Denmark hosted and funded by the Danish District Energy Advisory Board.
The trip aimed to explore how Danish best practices and innovation in district heating can assist in New York’s pursuit of decarbonization in electric production.
The BPU is progressing in its Retool/District Heating initiative, a project that will expand and improve the utility’s District Heating system. The utility division currently serves 70 customers and more than 700 apartments. A two-year study by Ramboll Engineering suggested new methods for updating the BPU’s heating sources and recommended enlarging its customer base.
As part of the Denmark summit, institutions such as the Danish Energy Agency, the State of Green Denmark, the Danish Board of District Heating and Energinet presented to the twenty New Yorkers invited to attend.
The program incorporated visits to facilities in Denmark, such as Aalborg University Copenhagen, the Greater Copenhagen Utility, Copenhill/Amager Bakke and Smorum Kraftvarme. Touring these locations exposed participants to the district heating system in Copenhagen, which supplies 99% of all Copenhagen buildings with district heating.
Copenhill is a state-of-the-art waste-to-energy plant that is a Copenhagen landmark. This plant includes a rooftop ski slope, which showcases how industrial sites can be integrated into urban life while providing utility infrastructure.
Smorum Kraftvarme is a consumer-owned district heating cooperative that produces heat from a solar thermal plant and air source heat pumps.
The Taarnby Utility, just outside Copenhagen, exemplified a district energy system at a smaller municipal utility. Visiting the Taarnby Utility exposed the group to how smaller municipalities manage district heating operations and collaborate with larger utilities.
Sellstrom noted that he was inspired by the prospect of applying the Danish approach to Jamestown’s district heating system.
He said, Denmark’s “…systems utilize solar, large-scale thermal storage, waste to energy, waste heat recovery and the use of industrial heat pumps, technologies we could use here to retool our own District Heating Division.”
The BPU’s Derek Johnson commented that the systems in Denmark are of a similar age to Jamestown. “The Danish are finding that steel pipe installed in the same time frame as ours is in good shape when excavated, except where insulation is compromised,” said Johnson. “We found that encouraging.”
“They have some innovations we are evaluating for our system here in Jamestown,” continued Johnson. “Denmark is using heat transfer from their wastewater treatment plants, one method suggested for our Retool/District Heat initiative.”
“Their systems serve residential, industrial and commercial customers in Denmark,” stated Johnson. “They have pre-packaged heat and hot water units for smaller customers and store hot water in tanks and manmade covered ponds for peak heating periods.”
“Their thermal energy networks provide a more reliable and resilient energy system than electricity alone could,” added Sellstrom. “Their techniques leverage low-cost, long-duration and scalable thermal energy storage which they have deployed at scale at an order of magnitude lower cost than current electric storage options with no harmful byproducts or mining needs. They simply leverage large hot water tanks/reservoirs and use that thermal energy to provide long-duration energy security for their communities.”
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