The potential of power-to-heat in Swedish district heating systems

The main challenge for future electricity systems is to match the available electricity from variable renewable resources with the electricity demand in place, time and quantity. One option for increasing electricity system flexibility is to integrate the electricity system with the district heating systems via the use of power-to-heat technologies such as electric boilers. The overarching objective of this paper is to increase the understanding of what role power-to-heat could have in Sweden and to contribute to the development of methods and tools that can be applied when analysing the potential of power-to-heat. For that purpose we estimate the technical potential of power-to-heat for different power scenarios and assumptions and identify key parameters which have significant impact on the potential. The calculations are based on hourly simulations of electricity production, electricity consumption and district heat load. The power-to-heat potential was estimated to 0.2–8.6 TWh, where the potentials at the higher end pertain to scenarios with high amounts of wind and solar power production (corresponding to 54–64% of electricity consumption). Access to thermal storage increases the potential of power-to-heat while the use of industrial waste heat and heat from waste incineration in the district heat load reduces the potential.