The increasing share of wind power in the Danish energy system is causing decentralized combined heat and power district heating plants to shut down. This forces the system to export the surplus wind power then there is not enough demand to match it. On the other hand this decrease in CHPDH plants comes as an issue of a decrease in security of energy supply when there is not enough wind power in the system. Especially that using interconnectors to balance the energy system is no always a viable solution, for that these connectors might not have the capacity needed.
Therefore an analysis is made to determine the potential of survival of the CHPDH plants. Focusing on improved operation of the plant through optimizing trading, investing in a heat pump to absorb the excess wind power, further more modification of the current institutional levies applied on heat pumps took part of the analysis to investigate further potential of the DH plants.
This project shown that there is high potential of survival for CHPDH plant, since there is still room for operation improvement, additionally investing in a heat pump absorbed the surplus electricity in the system adding to the importance of CHPDH, finally modification of institutional levies further enhanced the plant’s operation, hence offering a positive business case for CHPDH.