Fjernvarme Fyn is already expanding Tietgensbyens Varmecentral

Tietgenbyens Heat Plant has barely come into operation before being expanded by an additional 20 MW. Even before Tietgenbyen’s Heating Plant had really started operating and the surplus heat from Facebook was flowing in the district heating pipes, Fjernvarme Fyn has decided to expand the plant. The expansion is part of Fjernvarme Fyn’s plan to phase out coal by 2025. It will require a massive expansion with heat pumps, electric boilers and other technologies.

In the summer of 2017, Fjernvarme Fyn entered into an agreement with Facebook to purchase the surplus heat free of charge from the company’s data center in Tietgenbyen, construction work began in April 2018. In September 2019, the nine heat pumps and other necessary equipment fired up the plant into gear. The heating plant has a capacity of 25 MW and can supply 7000 households with heat a year.

The first amount of heat has started to come in and we are switching to commercial operations in a few months, says Kim Winther, Business Development Manager at Fjernvarme Fyn. Whether Kim is psychic or just a lucky punch is not known, but even when the first pitch to the Central was taken in 2018, he opened the door for an expansion. He advised at that time, that it could be expanded if the need were to one day arise. And that day is now!

Fjernvarme Fyn initially agreed that should there be more heat from the data center then it should be utilized. Now they can see that the plant, soon to be commissioned, will be fully utilized and will generally be in need of more heat pumps. Thus, the reason why a brand new plant is now being built next to the one recently completed.

That being said, the 20 MW heat pump capacity now installed may not run solely on surplus heat.

We see heat pumps as an important contributor to our future system – and they must both be based on excess heat, seawater, wastewater air, etc. Now we have the building and heat pumps, but whether it will only be surplus heat or also air-to-water, we cannot say yet, says Kim Winther.