Urban areas are today responsible for nearly two thirds of India’s GDP and are bound to make a bigger contribution in the future. It is with this reasoning we have seen the Government draft plans to build Smart Cities across the country.
Smart cities are defined to be smart not only because of the infrastructure it will provide but also due to the efficiency with which it utilizes resources to run it. For example, let us take into consideration air conditioning, something that a common man naturally associates with better conditions to live and work under. Setting up central air conditioning in individual buildings can cost up to 10% of the overall building costs, not to mention the increased costs in maintenance and future energy consumption. A system that efficiently manages both the heating and cooling energy requirements is known as district energy.
To build a compact and connected smart city, sustainability and awareness are keys. In fact, smart cities across the globe have moved towards district cooling i.e., a centralized cooling station that will take care of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning of buildings within its grid. Be it commercial or private structures. There are significant cost savings from building setup and maintenance to reduced energy consumption while still efficiently delivering on cooling requirements. This system not only plays to the economy of scales (meaning it would cost lesser to buy machinery for a single large set up, than multiple machineries for individual set up in each building) but also is a much greener solution due to its sheer efficiency in managing not only air conditioning and ventilation requirements but the left over heat that can be used in district heating systems.
It is estimated that by 2050 the energy utilized for cooling requirements around the world would be much more than the energy for heating requirements. The technology needed to make sure that we limit climate change within 2-3 degree Celsius already exists. It’s the implementation and management that we need to carry out. This technology is already in use in GIFT City Gujarat and has helped the management consume 65-80 per cent of the energy as compared to conventional air-conditioning.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) demonstrated that district energy systems provide efficiency gains of up to 80% -90% relative to conventional heat and electricity generation. i.e, upto nearly 35 gigatons of carbon emissions can be avoided by 2050, through the use of modern district heating and cooling. Implementation of district energy is a gateway for improving the infrastructure needed for greener solutions especially when we see a movement towards using renewable energy resources.
The Indian government supported by a technical team empaneling experts from Danfoss India has carried out assessments on five cities to understand their potential for implementing district cooling Initiatives with a view on developing bankable pilot district energy project approval. But such large scale implementation needs careful mapping and utilization to make sure the system runs at optimum efficiency to reduce wastage.
Danfoss has engineered several technology solutions that can answer these needs and we have these solutions implemented across the globe for District Energy which includes cooling and heating. We believe that processes and infrastructure that are focused on energy efficiency would provide better sustainable and economical yields.
Source: Danfoss
