Integrated community energy and harvesting systems: A climate action strategy for cold climates

In this article, the Integrated Community Energy and Harvesting System is introduced, a grid modernization solution for cold climates that incites a paradigm shift in virtual power plant design and operation. The focus is on system-wide GHG reductions by using variable temperature micro-thermal networks and prioritizing the harvesting of existing residual (waste) energy resources in communities, such as high-grade heat from decentralized fossil-fuel marginal generators, low-grade heat from cooling processes and curtailed carbon-free electricity. The novel strategy enables rapid fuel switching between residual energy resources, changing the micro-thermal network temperature between 20 and 70 °C on the scale of an hour, which provides valuable electrical demand response while maximizing the use of existing underutilized energy resources. Thermal storage is shown to have a critical role in both storing residual energy for later use, daily and seasonally, and enabling electrical demand response by rapidly changing the micro-thermal network temperature. The quantity of residual energy sources identified highlights that, as much as, 50% of all building heating loads could be met by energy currently rejected to the atmosphere. To illustrate the ICE-Harvest system’s effectiveness, a detailed case study is conducted on a typical integrated community and then applied to 1,000 prospective sites across a cold climate jurisdiction with a relatively low-carbon grid. It is shown that cooling process heat recovery, an energy source which is already located at buildings, can provide 24% of the prospective sites’ heating load when powered by carbon free, otherwise curtailed electricity. The results demonstrate that mass deployment of ICE-Harvest systems has the potential to provide 72% of the heating demand of these building clusters from residual energy sources, corresponding to an over 58% reduction in GHG emissions.