27
June
2022
|
10:27
Europe/Berlin

Uniper City Plants in the Netherlands saves cost and CO2 emissions with Gradyent’s Digital Twin

Summary

Digitalization to enable heating system transformation

We aim to deliver affordable and reliable heat to our customers. Therefore, we are striving for cost efficiency and decarbonization of our heat production units connected to the district heating networks. We believe that digital initiatives play a key role in making this transformation happen and therefore, we have selected Gradyent as our partner. Our aim is to use all possible asset-based and intelligent, digital solutions to get closer to the goal of decarbonization.

The core of Gradyent's cloud platform is a Digital Twin for district heating networks. The Digital Twin is a digital representation of the heating network combining geographical, weather and sensor data with physical models enhanced by AI. In this representation, heat sources, hydraulics and user data are integrated and used to optimize and predict the heating system’s behavior.

Building the Digital Twin

In 2021, we started together with Gradyent to build a Digital Twin for one of our heating systems, including the heat distribution in the network and the heat production units - a complex system of multiple production units in different locations across the network.

Since fall 2021 the Digital Twin is live and enables real-time optimisation. While ensuring that every user in the network obtains sufficient heat, the Digital Twin optimises the operation of the network and the source heat dispatch by selecting the most cost-efficient operation strategy of the heat production assets. In the intuitive Digital Twin application, the operators are supported by choosing the most optimal operating setpoints. Heat losses in the network are minimized by deploying setpoints for lower operating temperatures. At the same time, the security of supply is increased.

Peter Hulshof, COO Gradyent: Managing a district heating system has never been more challenging. To succeed, heating systems need to transform. We are proud to be part of Uniper’s digitalization journey to optimize and decarbonize their heating systems and make them future proof.”

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Optimization and decarbonization of the Uniper heating system

The Digital Twin shows substantial cost and CO2 reduction potential to us by optimising the heat network. This proves that cost savings and decarbonisation can go hand-in-hand and is a critical milestone on the decarbonisation journey of district heating that we have embarked on.

Sander Aukema, MT member Uniper City Plants: “Gradyent’s integrated view on the network and production assets is able to deliver significant savings for us.”

Next steps

Once a Digital Twin is built for a heating network, additional use cases can easily be added to create even more value from the Digital Twin. Together with us, the Gradyent Digital Twin was expanded to test the impact of adding a heat pump to the production mix. The Digital Twin's integrated solution gave valuable insights into the optimal choice of specifications, as well as dynamics and operating modes for the heat production strategy including heat pumps. In live operation, the Digital Twin will generate significant operational cost and CO2 savings on a yearly basis.

Pascal Scheffler, Innovation Manager at Uniper SE: “Gradyent’s Digital Twin is a powerful tool that is very useful to the industry in the face of increasing volatility and the need for efficiency improvements to reduce CO2 with an excellent team. Cooperation with innovative scale-ups like Gradyent is important to keep up with the emerging requirements.”

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