The KTH Royal Institute of Technology Heat and Power Symposium held on Wednesday, 2 April 2024, brought together more than 200 stakeholders to network and discuss how clean thermal energy solutions for industrial heat and power can be deployed efficiently. The Division of Heat and Power at the KTH Energy Department is active in 26 European and nationally funded projects, including I-UPS.
The event gathered actors and stakeholders across the entire energy value chain, including the financial sector which is critical to the growth and deployment of renewable energy solutions and technologies.
KTH Head of Heat and Power Technology in Energy Technology, Rafael Guedez, who co-organised and moderated the event, is a researcher, consultant and networker within energy circles who was able to draw high-level actors and stakeholders to the symposium.
The relevance of thermal energy solutions and storage was central to the discussion on how to secure energy for industrial heat and power, particularly as electricity grids struggle to keep up with demand.
Speaking before the event, the Scientific co-ordinator and researcher on the Horizon Europe I-UPS project from KTH, Silvia Trevisan, told KTH communication: “I think we are at a very critical moment in our decarbonisation effort”. She emphasised the need for quick, effective solutions to “drastically reduce our fossil fuel consumption and emissions in the industrial sector”.
Trevisan said in a previous interview with the I-UPS project that we are still not fully aware of the relevance of thermal energy within global demand.
This is despite many renewable and thermal energy technologies being mature and ready to be deployed, or close-to-ready, she said.
“We could do better in communicating the sector possibilities for coupling, like looking at how both thermal energy storage and heat pumps could support and alleviate some of the challenges of the power sector,” Trevisan said.
High-temperature heat pumps (HTHPs) powered by low-emission electricity are broadly acknowledged as a key technology for decarbonising the heating sector. They play a central role in the global shift toward secure, sustainable, and affordable heat supply. This is because they provide more thermal energy units in the form of heat and steam than they consume in electricity.
Currently, cheap fossil fuels are used mostly to generate heat and power for industrial processing. Higher electricity prices in many European countries, Scandinavia excluded, remain one of the major barriers for a faster industrial electrification using HTHPs coupled with renewable energy sources (RES) and thermal energy storage (TES).
But Guedez said that the bigger challenge for industry is the restricted access to electricity supply due to the limitations of grid capacity. "There is simply no access to draw the power from. There is a lack of grid buildout at a time when we need to speed-up ‘electrification’ opportunities,” he commented.
“Industry wants reliable solutions to switch away from fossil-based steam and drying systems. This is where developing thermal energy storage makes sense because it’s the best technology to use when an end-user needs steam-based heat,” he explained.
“Storage in the form of heat that is on-site satisfies the needs of end-users. And until the electricity network develops further, we need policies that explicitly support and value the flexibility of the integrated power-to-heat and storage systems,” he explained.
Business Policy Expert in Climate and Energy, Technology Industries of Sweden, Miriam Munnich Vaas, said on the day that "in 20 years' time we need to double the electricity supply and we need government support to make it happen at fair prices".
Enerin CEO, Arne Høeg, who is a partner in I-UPS, said that not having access to the grid is a common theme in Norway due to a lack of grid infrastructure.
New high-voltage transmission lines can take years to plan and approve, often facing tough environmental obstacles.
“Industrial heat pumps can take strain off the grid because they provide more thermal heat energy efficiency than direct electric heating. They consume less electricity,” Høeg commented after the event.
“Coupling HTHPs with thermal energy storage, using molten salts – a mature technology now – is a logical step to explore ways to deliver secure energy supplies, also through the integration of renewables,” he said.
“On a European level, by leveraging HoegTemp and other flexible industrial heat pumps as grid assets, the electrification of European industry will require less new grid capacity, reduce the risk of negative prices for the buildout of renewables which is necessary, and reduce the average grid connection fees for everyone,” the Enerin CEO said.
The December 2023 Fraunhofer Agora Energiewende study: The rollout of large-scale heatpumps in Germany stated that “flexible, ‘green electricity-led’ operation of heat pumps reduces the load on the electricity grids through coupling with the heating sector, avoids unnecessary curtailments on renewable electricity production and reduces the carbon footprint of heat generation”.
The report went on to say that the majority of the heat can be saved in heat storage facilities and used later when there are lower levels of renewable electricity supply. Developing effective thermal energy storage systems integrating HTHPs will facilitate the stable delivery of thermal energy further.
European funded projects such as I-UPS are exploring ways in which to integrate HTHP systems with thermal energy storage. I-UPS will validate up to TRL 5 a First-of-a-Kind HTHP based on a Stirling system able to deliver decarbonised heat up to 400°C.
The project aims for a seamless integration of the developed HTHP in flexible energy systems including molten salts based TES for on-demand decarbonised industrial heat based on RES electricity. The technology providers on I-UPS are Kyoto Group, Enerin AS and RPow.
One of the major challenges to sustain the growth and deployment of thermal energy technologies from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) is through scaling. This is where adequate financing is pivotal.
Theoretically, the costs of the emerging and mature OEM technologies can be reduced when a higher market penetration and volume is achieved. In that way industrial and consumer uptake is enabled through better pricing, and the OEM technology providers can sustain themselves through growth and volume. Energy needs to be abundant at a competitive price to stimulate economic growth to produce everything we consume and need.
In Europe, there is no stopping the transition to clean energy. Funding programmes have been instrumental in supporting initiatives by encouraging the examination of total life cycle assessments (LCAs), which calculate the total cost and footprint of the entire value chain when analysing products and processes, for example. These assessments include many factors, including environmental emissions, safety, and the total resources that have been consumed, and could be saved, along the value chain.
Such assessments underpin the financial advantages for companies to make an early switch to clean energy versus a fossil, business-as-usual scenario that will attract punitive carbon penalties. I-UPS and associated European projects aim for workable energy solutions that support people, jobs and the environment.
Source: Philippa Webb, Enerin