Demand response potential of district heating in a swimming hall in Finland

In this paper, the demand response of district heating for swimming pools and pool space air is proposed and applied in a swimming hall in Finland. Swimming halls have significant heat demands e.g., domestic hot water supply, space heating and pool water heating, and thus have much large heat storage capacity for the realization of district-heat based demand response. A dynamic building simulation tool IDA ICE was used to simulate whole swimming hall including pools and HVAC systems. In addition, a rule-based demand response algorithm which utilized dynamic district heat price was proposed and applied in the district heating control of the studied swimming hall. The results show that the large storing capacity of pool water promises the large amount of charged and discharged heat energy, and ensure the application of demand response of district heating in swimming hall. The application of demand response of district heating can increase the average pool water temperature from the normal setpoint of 26.5 °C to 27.3 °C. In addition, demand-response district heating control for the swimming pool water and pool space air decreases the total district heat costs of the swimming hall by 1.1%. During the repayment periods of 7 and 15 years, the energy cost savings and maximum cost of profitable investment for the demand response control are between 10 000 € and 20 000 €.