With Jan Hanus, CEO of ORGREZ ECO, we talked about the Green Heat Industry, which reduces the carbon footprint by tens of percent thanks to the connection of current conventional sources with renewable sources and the emphasis on short-term heat storage, and thus the impact of emission allowances on heat prices.
For whom will the EU ETS make production more expensive?
The removal of the 20 MW limit will affect smaller heating plants, but also a wide range of industrial enterprises such as sugar factories, paint shops, drying plants, etc. Smaller towns and municipalities and their thermal power industry have so far, sometimes deliberately, produced below the EU ETS limit, i.e. below 20 MW. However, 2027 will mean a significant increase in price and therefore their carbon footprint needs to be reduced. Less emissions means paying less for allowances.
How do you reduce emissions from heating plants and heating plants?
Green heating is about efficient use of modern resources while maintaining stability and safety of operation. The ORGREZ Group will carry out an assessment of the heating plant or heating plant, evaluate its economics, consumption and remaining lifetime and, according to this analysis, supplement or replace conventional sources with modern sources that also work with electricity so that they complement each other in the best possible way. An appropriate mix of resources will allow stability even under the least favourable conditions, allowing price fluctuations to be used to the benefit of the economy, while ensuring that the resource uses renewable resources as much as possible.
But isn’t this combination of sources challenging to operate?
A resource management system, ideally built on the foundations of the management already in place, stands over the operation of the technology. This ensures stability and ease of operation. The superstructure is communication with predictive control on its own cloud, which ORGREZ originally developed for power balance support services. The software evaluates at each moment whether it is more profitable to buy or sell electricity on the spot market, whether to start burning gas, when it is more profitable to store heat and when to discharge from storage, in short, we plan the operation online. However, this requires a properly designed combination of technologies in the first place. The basic building block is the flexibility of the heating plant – the ability to react flexibly to the electricity market and, thanks to the cloud solution, to manage when and how to consume and produce energy. This approach can save both significant financial resources and emissions.
How do you arrive at the optimal combination of resources?
In the first instance, it is necessary to analyse the state of the heating plant before modernisation. This is followed by the identification of possible solutions, the design of alternatives and the joint selection of a suitable solution with the client. During the elaboration, it is also advisable to check the possibilities of providing subsidies. The energy sector is a critical sector for decarbonisation and subsidy support is effective here to accelerate the modernisation. This is followed by the preparation of the documentation for the construction procedure, the preparation of the subsidy applications, the supply of the technologies and their integration into the heating plant system, the construction of the key interface for the PLC and the modification of the control system that will be linked to the software control. The control system evaluates according to the current situation the instructions which source should be producing, which should be standing still, or for example which one should be shut down, when to charge or discharge the accumulation.
The entire device is then monitored by the aforementioned Central Cloud?
Yes. Its main function is to monitor energy price movements on the market, how the weather will evolve, how much photovoltaics will produce in the coming time, how gas supplies and prices are evolving, and then to react to this by the appropriate mix of resources at any given time. When it comes to the preparation of such projects, we have a great deal of experience from more than 65 years of experience in implementing the principles of sustainable energy operation. So far we have done larger buildings and units, now it is smaller power units, but the rules are the same.
Do you have any proven results from practice with Green Heating?
An example is the implementation in Rychnov nad Kněžnou. The heating plant there is small, gas-fired, with an output of 0.88 MW. An assessment of the heating plant revealed a solution in the form of installing photovoltaics, an industrial heat pump, an electric boiler and storage while maintaining the gas boilers. Combining these sources achieved a projected 42% reduction in the boiler plant’s carbon footprint. The gas boiler we retained serves as a backup for the winter months. When we hit the limits of the distribution system, which would not allow us to exceed 100 kWp, we were forced to retire the sources and ended up with a 35% reduction in our carbon footprint. It is important to mention that we fit in financially, there was no increase in the price of heat and we did not calculate emission allowances at that time. So in 2027, the financial efficiency of this project will be even greater.
What is the time commitment for such an upgrade?
For smaller local heating plants we need 12 to 24 months for implementation, for larger projects 18 to 36 months including documentation, securing building permits and project implementation. This is a very efficient solution in terms of time, investment and long-term benefits, and we can prepare our customers for 2027. In addition, we can ensure the transition to a more sustainable, modern heating system on a turnkey basis, without municipalities having to worry about the design, installation or subsequent operation of the sources.
You introduced the greening of the heating industry. What other services does ORGREZ ECO focus on?
We also help cities, municipalities and companies with decarbonisation plans, energy systems, community energy projects, waste management and environmental assessment services. Larger companies are then assisted with a pragmatic ESG assessment in terms of benefits for the company itself, its development and competitiveness, rather than in the format of an administrative burden. In short, we help to achieve sustainable business, which we understand as a balance of the three E’s: economy, ecology and efficiency. We design strategies and projects that are data-driven, eco-friendly and at the same time economically and technically sensible.
Thank you for the interview.