COMMENCE Workshop: Heating in Polish Energy Communities

Background

The development of energy communities in the area of heat has so far been treated as a secondary issue compared to electricity. In the region of Central and Eastern Europe, heat communities are less developed due to the lack of established legal and financial models and the dispersed heating infrastructure.

New technologies such as cogeneration, biogas plants, geothermal energy, waste process heat or large heat pumps can form the basis for local initiatives, but their successful implementation requires the development of optimal business models and cooperation between local authorities, companies and residents.

Although the concept of energy communities remains the same regardless of the energy carrier, the specifics of the infrastructure affect the technical, economic and legal requirements. When comparing electricity and heat, there are significant differences in the distribution infrastructure, generation technologies and storage capacities. Heat storage facilities offer potentially much larger capacities than those used for electricity. In the field of renewable energy, heat pumps can be used to produce heat, although their low thermal parameters require large storage volumes. Alternatively, higher temperatures can be achieved through conventional technologies powered by renewable fuels such as biogas or biomethane.

For energy communities, it is crucial to properly define the operating conditions of thermal installations. It may be more advantageous to use one sufficiently large heat source (e.g. large heat pumps or biogas boilers) and share it within the energy cluster. Integrating different technologies and energy carriers can increase the independence of communities and improve the efficiency of energy self-generation and self-consumption.

Significant infrastructural and regulatory challenges are also worth noting. While every household and every company has a power connection and the electricity grid operates under the Third Party Access (TPA) principle, the situation is different when it comes to district heating networks. In cities, the TPA principle does not apply, and outside cities, heating infrastructure often does not exist at all, which means that it has to be created from scratch for potential energy communities.

Workshop

The workshop will be an opportunity to discuss the current legal status and the technical, regulatory and economic challenges related to the use of RES in heat production for energy communities in Poland.

Registration

You can register for this workshop here.