IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v17y2024i2p541-d1324228.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing the Flexibility Potential of Industrial Heat–Electricity Sector Coupling through High-Temperature Heat Pumps: The Case Study of Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • Chiara Magni

    (Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium)

  • Robbe Peeters

    (Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium)

  • Sylvain Quoilin

    (Integrated and Sustainable Energy Systems (ISES) Research Unit, University of Liège, B-4000 Liège, Belgium)

  • Alessia Arteconi

    (Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium
    EnergyVille, Thor Park, B-3600 Genk, Belgium
    Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences (DIISM), Marche Polytechnic University, 60131 Ancona, Italy)

Abstract

Thermal processes represent a significant fraction of industrial energy consumptions, and they rely mainly on fossil fuels. Thanks to technological innovation, highly efficient devices such as high-temperature heat pumps are becoming a promising solution for the electrification of industrial heat. These technologies allow for recovering waste heat sources and upgrading them at temperatures up to 200 °C. Moreover, the coupling of these devices with thermal storage units can unlock the flexibility potential deriving from the industrial sector electrification by means of Demand-Side Management strategies. The aim of this paper is to quantify the impact on the energy system due to the integration of industrial high-temperature heat pumps and thermal storage units by means of a detailed demand–supply model. To do that, the industrial heat demand is investigated through a set of thermal process archetypes. High-temperature heat pumps and thermal storage units for industrial use are included in the open-source unit commitment and optimal dispatch model Dispa-SET used for the representation of the energy system. The case study analyzed is Belgium, and the analysis is performed for different renewable penetration scenarios in 2040 and 2050. The results demonstrate the importance of a proper sizing of the heat pump and thermal storage capacity. Furthermore, it is obtained that the electrification of the thermal demand of industrial processes improves the environmental impact (84% reduction in CO 2 emissions), but the positive effect of the energy flexibility provided by the heat pumps is appreciated only in the presence of a very high penetration of renewable energy sources.

Suggested Citation

  • Chiara Magni & Robbe Peeters & Sylvain Quoilin & Alessia Arteconi, 2024. "Assessing the Flexibility Potential of Industrial Heat–Electricity Sector Coupling through High-Temperature Heat Pumps: The Case Study of Belgium," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(2), pages 1-14, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:2:p:541-:d:1324228
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/2/541/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/2/541/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arpagaus, Cordin & Bless, Frédéric & Uhlmann, Michael & Schiffmann, Jürg & Bertsch, Stefan S., 2018. "High temperature heat pumps: Market overview, state of the art, research status, refrigerants, and application potentials," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 985-1010.
    2. Pardo, Nicolas & Vatopoulos, Kostantinos & Riekkola, Anna Krook & Perez, Alicia, 2013. "Methodology to estimate the energy flows of the European Union heating and cooling market," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 339-352.
    3. Bloess, Andreas & Schill, Wolf-Peter & Zerrahn, Alexander, 2018. "Power-to-heat for renewable energy integration: A review of technologies, modeling approaches, and flexibility potentials," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 1611-1626.
    4. Nolan, Sheila & O’Malley, Mark, 2015. "Challenges and barriers to demand response deployment and evaluation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 1-10.
    5. Bloess, Andreas & Schill, Wolf-Peter & Zerrahn, Alexander, 2018. "Power-to-heat for renewable energy integration: A review of technologies, modeling approaches, and flexibility potentials," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 1611-1626.
    6. Paulus, Moritz & Borggrefe, Frieder, 2011. "The potential of demand-side management in energy-intensive industries for electricity markets in Germany," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 432-441, February.
    7. Heffron, Raphael & Körner, Marc-Fabian & Wagner, Jonathan & Weibelzahl, Martin & Fridgen, Gilbert, 2020. "Industrial demand-side flexibility: A key element of a just energy transition and industrial development," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rosales-Pérez, Josué F. & Villarruel-Jaramillo, Andrés & Pérez-García, Manuel & Cardemil, José M. & Escobar, Rodrigo, 2025. "Energy and economic performance evaluation of solar thermal and photovoltaic hybrid systems for industrial process heating," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 324(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fridgen, Gilbert & Keller, Robert & Körner, Marc-Fabian & Schöpf, Michael, 2020. "A holistic view on sector coupling," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    2. Els van der Roest & Stijn Beernink & Niels Hartog & Jan Peter van der Hoek & Martin Bloemendal, 2021. "Towards Sustainable Heat Supply with Decentralized Multi-Energy Systems by Integration of Subsurface Seasonal Heat Storage," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-31, November.
    3. Els van der Roest & Theo Fens & Martin Bloemendal & Stijn Beernink & Jan Peter van der Hoek & Ad J. M. van Wijk, 2021. "The Impact of System Integration on System Costs of a Neighborhood Energy and Water System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-33, May.
    4. Barco-Burgos, J. & Bruno, J.C. & Eicker, U. & Saldaña-Robles, A.L. & Alcántar-Camarena, V., 2022. "Review on the integration of high-temperature heat pumps in district heating and cooling networks," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PE).
    5. Fodstad, Marte & Crespo del Granado, Pedro & Hellemo, Lars & Knudsen, Brage Rugstad & Pisciella, Paolo & Silvast, Antti & Bordin, Chiara & Schmidt, Sarah & Straus, Julian, 2022. "Next frontiers in energy system modelling: A review on challenges and the state of the art," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    6. Martin Kittel & Alexander Roth & Wolf-Peter Schill, 2024. "Coping with the Dunkelflaute: Power system implications of variable renewable energy droughts in Europe," Papers 2411.17683, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2025.
    7. Osorio-Aravena, Juan Carlos & Aghahosseini, Arman & Bogdanov, Dmitrii & Caldera, Upeksha & Ghorbani, Narges & Mensah, Theophilus Nii Odai & Haas, Jannik & Muñoz-Cerón, Emilio & Breyer, Christian, 2023. "Synergies of electrical and sectoral integration: Analysing geographical multi-node scenarios with sector coupling variations for a transition towards a fully renewables-based energy system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    8. Gjorgievski, Vladimir Z. & Markovska, Natasa & Abazi, Alajdin & Duić, Neven, 2021. "The potential of power-to-heat demand response to improve the flexibility of the energy system: An empirical review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    9. Sneum, Daniel Møller & González, Mario Garzón & Gea-Bermúdez, Juan, 2021. "Increased heat-electricity sector coupling by constraining biomass use?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    10. Sihvonen, Ville & Ollila, Iisa & Jaanto, Jasmin & Grönman, Aki & Honkapuro, Samuli & Riikonen, Juhani & Price, Alisdair, 2024. "Role of power-to-heat and thermal energy storage in decarbonization of district heating," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    11. Guelpa, Elisa & Bischi, Aldo & Verda, Vittorio & Chertkov, Michael & Lund, Henrik, 2019. "Towards future infrastructures for sustainable multi-energy systems: A review," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 2-21.
    12. Shirizadeh, Behrang & Quirion, Philippe, 2022. "The importance of renewable gas in achieving carbon-neutrality: Insights from an energy system optimization model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    13. Zhang, Menglin & Wu, Qiuwei & Wen, Jinyu & Pan, Bo & Qi, Shiqiang, 2020. "Two-stage stochastic optimal operation of integrated electricity and heat system considering reserve of flexible devices and spatial-temporal correlation of wind power," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    14. Sara Bellocchi & Michele Manno & Michel Noussan & Michela Vellini, 2019. "Impact of Grid-Scale Electricity Storage and Electric Vehicles on Renewable Energy Penetration: A Case Study for Italy," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-32, April.
    15. Zhao, Yongliang & Song, Jian & Liu, Ming & Zhao, Yao & Olympios, Andreas V. & Sapin, Paul & Yan, Junjie & Markides, Christos N., 2022. "Thermo-economic assessments of pumped-thermal electricity storage systems employing sensible heat storage materials," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 431-456.
    16. Ruhnau, Oliver & Hirth, Lion & Praktiknjo, Aaron, 2020. "Heating with wind: Economics of heat pumps and variable renewables," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    17. Hou, Hui & Xu, Tao & Wu, Xixiu & Wang, Huan & Tang, Aihong & Chen, Yangyang, 2020. "Optimal capacity configuration of the wind-photovoltaic-storage hybrid power system based on gravity energy storage system," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 271(C).
    18. Haas, Reinhard & Duic, Neven & Auer, Hans & Ajanovic, Amela & Ramsebner, Jasmine & Knapek, Jaroslav & Zwickl-Bernhard, Sebastian, 2023. "The photovoltaic revolution is on: How it will change the electricity system in a lasting way," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    19. Marina, A. & Spoelstra, S. & Zondag, H.A. & Wemmers, A.K., 2021. "An estimation of the European industrial heat pump market potential," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    20. Florin Iov & Mahmood Khatibi & Jan Dimon Bendtsen, 2020. "On the Participation of Power-To-Heat Assets in Frequency Regulation Markets—A Danish Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-22, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:2:p:541-:d:1324228. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.