Already existing heating network

[AlinaFhI]

Good morning,
I am a master's student from Germany, and for my master's thesis at an Institute, I am comparing three district heating planning tools, one of which is the City Energy Analyzer. The results are important for a project aimed at advising municipal utilities on suitable tools.
I have been looking into the City Energy Analyzer and have a few questions:

1. I have a district in which I am applying the tools for comparison. This area already has some existing heating network lines, and further lines need to be planned and constructed. How can I draw/implement the existing pipes into the tool? The simulated thermal network does not depict pipes, where in reality already some pipes lay.
2. How can the demand for a house be adjusted when there are many houses, all with different demands? Do I need to adjust each house individually, or is there an option to upload a table or shapefile with the data?
3. Can I implement energy storage into the system within the app?
4. Am I able to specify the number and the dimensions of the energy generation plants myself?
   To address the tasks for which I am asking these questions, do I need the developer version, or can I achieve this with the standard version of CEA?
   Thank you for your assistance.

Best regards,
Alina

[MatNif]

Hi @AlinaFhI,

Let me anwer your questions one by one:

1. For context you should know that CEA's algortihms utilise the streets network as a graph of 'potential' thermal network paths. The underlying assumption is that the streets are typically the easiest location to lay new pipes for a thermal network system in an urban context. As of now, that is the only context in which the streets.shp-file is utilised for cacluations in CEA (The file can be found under /your_project/your_scenario/inputs/networks/). That being said, if you have an exact network of existing pipes that you would like to use to reflect the thermal network in CEA you can simply replace the streets.shp-file with a graph of that network.

2. The buildings that you see in the CEA dashboard are stored in the zone.shp-file (found under /your_project/your_scenario/inputs/building-geometry). The basic geometrical parameter of these buildings are stored in the corresponding DBF-file, i.e. zone.dbf. All other parameters, describing construction and operation of the buildings are found in the various dbf-files under /your_project/your_scenario/inputs/building-properties. Modifying any of the parameters found in these will likely have an impact on the building's computed energy demand. The parameters can either be changed in the dbf-files directly (you could write scripts to do that for you) or under the "Input Editor" section of the dashboard where you'd likely have to change parameters individually.

3. No, unfortunately introducing energy storage is not yet an option. We are working on an extension of the optimisation algorithm that would introduce that. But we don't yet have a specific timeline for the release of that feature.

4. The optimisation script performs an automatic allocation of thermal network connections and builds supply systems that have enough capacity to feed these networks. You can specify how many networks should be introduced at most into the given district (under the basic parameters of the 'Supply system part II (centralised)' script). However, that is as far as the user can go in terms of specifying sizing and extend of the thermal networks and their supply systems.

I hope this helps you better understand what the current capabilities of the City Energy Analyst are and how you might be able to utilise it in the scope of your thesis.

Best regards,
@MatNif