Italian District Heating Association AIRU founds newcommittee for innovation in DH networks

The new committee called ´Smart Cities´ aims at deepening innovation issues. AIRU members take part voluntarily into the committee, sharing experiences and know-how and investigating new technical opportunities.

Among AIRU´s activities, technical committees are meant as small working groups of utilities for deepening selected issues. Such issues are chosen according to members´ interests. Within these groups knowledge is shared among members and innovative solutions and strategies are developed, which each member utility may adopt and take benefit from. For this reason committees are crucial for the development of the district heating technology in Italy.

The main issues chosen for the current three years deal with technical topics such as substations and heat measurement, with legislative and commercial topics such as energy distribution and with planning and innovation issues such as exploiting local resources and Smart Cities. Solar district heating is espacially relevant for the latter committee which was founded in winter 2013 and will be operating for three years. The Smart Cities committee deals with innovation for smart district heating networks. After a first meeting participants agreed on investigating on diverse topics, among them integration of solar thermal into district heating networks. Case studies will be analyzed and the most recent developments at international level will be investigated. Feasibility of concentrating solar systems for higher temperature will also be evaluated, as most existing networks are operating at relatively high temperature.

Source: SDH – Solar District Heating EU