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Case

District energy

District heating

Waste-to-energy

Heat planning strategy for Vestforbraending

28. February 2009

Solution provider

Ramboll

Ramboll is a leading international architecture, engineering, and consultancy company, owned by the Ramboll Foundation.

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Vestforbraending is one of the largest waste management companies in Northern Europe. The company owns and operates a combined heat and power producing waste-to-energy facility and a district heating network, which is interconnected with the regional district heating system in Greater Copenhagen.

The energy planning strategy shows that an enlargement of the local district heating market will be very profitable for Vestforbraending and the Danish society, and that it will reduce the CO2 emissions significantly.

Rambool creates heat plan strategy
Ramboll is an in-house consultant to Vestforbraending and has provided services to the company for 45 years, including strategic heat supply planning and design of district heating and waste-to-energy units 1-5.

Since the market was shared between natural gas and district heating 30 years ago, many assumptions have changed. There is now much more energy from waste and saving CO2 emissions etc. is of high priority. Therefore, Vestforbraending asked Ramboll to prepare a heat plan strategy to identify a low cost solution for Vestforbrænding and for the Danish society. The strategy showed that it would be very profitable to replace large natural gas boilers with district heating, in total around a 350,000 MWh/year increase. The profitability of the project for Vestforbræding corresponds to an internal rate of return of more than 20%, which is far more than the loan interest rate of around 4%.

The next step for Vestforbraending was to prepare project proposals, which in accordance with the Heat Supply Act, were approved by the city councils.

As the first projects were successfully implemented, Vestforbrænding asked Ramboll to elaborate a business plan for a maximal extension of the district heating grid: Heat Plan 2015. This plan is also being implemented successfully, extending the distribution of heat to individual consumers from 300 to 900 MWh/a. The remaining will be transmitted to other distict heating companies in order to avoid waste of any heat in cooling towers.

As the inter-municipal company Vestforbrænding has the objective to minimize the costs of heat supply and waste management for the residents, both the waste costumers and the heat costumers can look forward to lower prices.

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