New Feature: In addition to the buildings connected to a specific district heating network, our heatbeat Digital Twin now also has the option to display the entire municipal building stock in our web interface. We originally started with dynamic simulations models for buildings, networks, and heat generators to represent and optimize district heating systems within our digital twin. Many of the results from our simulations, such as those from feasibility studies and transformation plans according to BEW (the German funding scheme for the construction and transformation of district heating networks), can already be interactively displayed in our web interface. With our latest development, the entire building stock of a town or city can now be displayed and analyzed as well.

We can now load the data for all buildings relevant to a specific project into our database and display the data in our interactive map view. In most cases, this includes building data such as usage and floor area. In cases where public data from a heat cadaster is available (as is the case in North Rhine-Westphalia for example), this data is also directly accessible within the Digital Twin and is thus placed in direct context with the detailed view of a district heating network. If this data is not available, we can simulate heat demands based on building data in the Digital Twin for specific projects and also visualize them. We see numerous applications for this, ranging from the extension of existing networks, to feasibility studies and transformation plans, and also to municipal heat planning.

For existing networks, network expansion and increasing the line density are central challenges. By visualizing the heat demands of all buildings in the supply area, our Digital Twin provides an intuitive way to prioritize inquiries and efficiently assess new connection possibilities. This directly leads to identifying which expansion paths should be examined more closely in the context of network dimensioning, dynamic simulation, and optimization.

Beyond the planning of individual expansion steps, representing the entire building stock also improves the foundation for feasibility studies and transformation plans. To strategically plan network expansion, expansion scenarios need to be considered in the complex interplay with the decarbonization of heat generators, network temperature reduction, and changes in demand due to retrofits and climate change. For this purpose, a detailed representation of all buildings in the Digital Twin beyond the scope of already connected buildings or a planned neighborhood is a helpful tool. And by displaying the building stock in the interactive web interface, it also provides an easy access point to solving complex challenges.

Of course, in addition to immediate network expansion and construction, municipal heat planning presents another extensive challenge for the heat transition. By representing the entire building stock of a municipality in the Digital Twin, there are also numerous opportunities here to achieve a higher level of detail and more meaningful results with reduced effort, ranging from the analysis of the current situation to future potentials, all the way to the definition of heat transition strategies and concrete measures. Through our first active projects in municipal heat planning, we are excited to use and further develop the Digital Twin in this direction in collaboration with our project partners.