Role of District Heating in Systems with a High Share of Renewables: Case Study for the City of Osijek

Highly efficient cogeneration and district heating systems have significant potential for primary energy savings which are still highly underutilized in the European Union. They also represent a very important factor when it comes to the planning of future energy systems because of their potential to increase the flexibility of the overall system and therefore enable a higher level of the utilization of intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and photovoltaic. The goal of this work is to present and utilize a heat demand mapping methodology on a case study for the city of Osijek in Croatia and to analyze the potential such systems have on the increase of the penetration of intermittent renewables. The data obtained through the mapping process have been used to create several scenarios for the development of Osijek's energy system with a high penetration of district heating, wind and solar energy. The EnergyPLAN modelling tool has been used to perform the energy system analysis created for this paper.