Performance of Space Heating in a Modern Energy System

In the paper we study the performance of a number of heat supply technologies. The background of the study is the changes in the Danish energy systems over the last three decades which have caused integration of large shares of combined heat and power (CHP), renewable fuels and wind power. These changes mean that there is a significant integration of electricity and heat supply in the system and that several technologies may be beneficial. In particular, heat pumps are under consideration and are often considered to be renewable energy. We study how to distribute fuel and emissions to the heat supply. We find that heat supply is low-efficient seen from an exergy viewpoint, between 1% and 26% utilization. As exergy is a quantification of primary energy, we conclude that far better utilization of primary energy is possible. We also find that combined heat and power and domestic heat pumps are the technologies with best performance, unless we consider solar heating and biomass from the viewpoints of CO2 emissions and fossil fuel consumption.