Workshop: Lessons from Data Driven Methods for District Heating (DAD)

About the workshop

Recent years have seen plenty of interest in data driven methods for district heating, spanning the gamut from strait forward applications such as demand forecasts and different types of optimisation to more involved applications such as anomaly and fault detection, and the simulation of district heating networks. While seemingly strait forward, the latter two are made difficult by the challenges of data access, a general lack of training data, the work of making the results available to the data owner, and the need to build cooperation between individuals with different expertise and interests.

Within the scope of the DAD project, which focuses on anomaly and fault detection for district heating substations, the organisers have recently worked through some of these challenges. We hope to build on this experience to address the academic / industrial divide by means of, firstly, a smaller workshop for selected individuals from academia and industry and, secondly, a larger workshop with a greater focus on outreach activities to anchor the results from the first workshop.

With the first workshop, we aim to produce material that can be used to clarify commitments and obligations in academic / industrial collaborations, and secure projects against the above mentioned challenges without adding further work to the already arduous process of negotiating a winning project proposal. We believe it can be structured along three perspectives:

• Strategic perspective: What challenges will the industry face over a 5, 10 and 15 years time horizon, what changes with a focus on sensors, IT and data driven methods are necessary to meet these challenges, and what are the most cost effective approaches that can be enacted today? For example, how can energy companies collaborate on IT, and how can they avoid one-off project solutions?
• Tactical perspective: How does academia and industry imagine the workflow for a typical collaborative project, where do the expectations align and where do they diverge, and how can we exemplify this? How to communicate academic / industrial prerequisites, incorporate academic / industrial priorities, and manage expectations?
• Technical perspective: What can be achieved with contemporary DHC data, and what can be achieved with access to other forms of data? What are the costs in person hours and computational resources for processing the data and visualising the results, and how can the situation be improved?

About the second workshop

With the second workshop, we aim to communicate the results to the broader academic / industrial thermal systems community, anchor them within the community, and initiate new collaborations.

Read about the DAD project

Workshop Organisers

• University of Borås
• Borås Energi och Miljö
• Noda Intelligent Systems AB

Additional Information

For more information about the workshop, contact gideon.mbiydzenyuy@hb.se or jens.brage@noda.se

Workshop program 24 August

09:00–09:15 Welcome
09:15–09:30 Review of workshop program part 1
09:30–09:45 Split into three focus groups

09:45-10:00 Break

10:00–10:30 Group work, challenges
10:30–10:45 Group work, challenges summary

10:45-11:00 Break

11:00–11:30 Group work, solutions
11:30–11:45 Group work, solutions summary

11:45–12:00 Break and transport to lunch
12:00–13:00 Lunch

13:00–13:15 Welcome back
13:15–13:30 Review of workshop program part 2
13:30–13:45 Split into three groups orthogonal to the previous groups

13:45–14:00 Break

14:00–14:30 Group work, review
14:30–14:45 Group work, review summary/recommendations

14:45–15:00 Break

15:00–15:30 Condensing the work into a common view
15:30–15:45 Practical implications for future project proposals

15:45–16:00 Break

16:00­–16:45 Panel discussion reflecting on the work

16:45–17:00 Break/end

17:00–17:45 The organisers sorting through the workshop material